Keep Writing August 2021 Moments

Well, I finished a story today for another Strangely Funny anthology submission. It's a vampire story but it's NOT in the same 'Verse as my previous vampire (actually dhampyr) tales. We will see how it goes and if this time I win that damn t-shirt!

(is informed this is not the one with the t-shirt giveaway) AW FFFFFFFFFFFFFF--

In the meantime, I saw a Twitter posting for submissions to something called "Dose of Dread" tied into a Dread Stone Press, a sort of flash-fiction submission (between 500-1000 words) looking for straight horror. I do have a horror story of sorts sitting around that's EXACTLY within that word limit, so first day of it (Sept. 1st) I should put in for it. (I also wrote on the fly a humorous flash-fiction about how I first confused it as "Rose of Dread" and we'll see if the editor has a sense of humor) 

KEEP WRITING, PEEPS!

Good News: I FINALLY Heard Back From the Royal Palm Judges for 2021 (w/Update)

...

Bad news is I didn't make Semifinalist status on my Fiction short story "War of the Murder Hornets," and on three of the political blog articles I submitted for the Non-Fiction Short category.

Odd news, I still have one blog article under consideration. We shall see...

Update 8/14: Nope, that last blog article also missed the Semifinalist cut with the Royal Palms. Alas.

Updates on Writing August 2021

1) Still have not heard from the FWA Royal Palm judges about my five submissions this year. They HAVE started sending out notifications to others who I see online crowing about getting Semi-Finalist status, so perhaps in another week or two...

2) I had submitted a work I've done a few years ago - "Road Trip to Vegas" - to an annual Mensa fiction issue (I am a member since 2001) and just heard back that I didn't make the final cut for that. They did have 130 submissions this year, which is really tough to compete against.

I may just end up putting "Road Trip" in with another story collection to self-publish. I am looking to cancel my deals with XLibris because those books never did sell well, I needed to update Last of the Grapefruit Wars to a better collection, and this may be my next big project for the month.

3) Mystery & Horror LLC is reopening submissions for the next Strangely Funny anthology. I have a funny premise and need to flesh it out. We'll see how it goes.

Witty Librarian as a Superhero Minifigure

If you ever worked with HeroClix or any RPG dice game, you might understand what this is.

An online friend from City of Heroes crafted this on Hero Forge's website, where you can design and purchase 3D figures to enhance your figure collection for RPGs. It's about as tall as a finger digit, yet the detail for that size is eye-catching.

Now I gotta put it somewhere the cats won't chew on it. ;-)

Camp NaNo July 2021 Results

Short take: I couldn't finish the project again.

Long take: Every time I tried to sit myself down to write, I couldn't do it. I felt no inspiration, no spark, could not find the words to commit to the story even though I *know* where I want that story - and several others I've left in limbo - to go.

I even took a few days off from work to see about getting a lot of the rough first draft done. Barely got a chapter out of it, and I'm not impressed with what I made.

I've been looking at myself in the mirror a lot lately, coming to terms with a few things, and at the top of the list is the realization that my depressive moods have returned. The pandemic anxiety, general loss of contact with friends in real life, and other unhappy truths about my lack of a social life seem to have left me drained.

So I am going back to the psychiatrists/psychologists to see what I can do to get myself out of this funk (again).

Just in case, if anybody's got a link to a Muse of inspiration, let me know what the arcane rituals are to summon one.

Alas.

 

Updating My Wittylibrarian Art

Still working on getting this definition / logo updated for self-merch and stuff.

So now I need to add this to a coffee mug somewhere... brb.

Update 7/25/21: Okay, got the coffee mug made at VistaPrint, and it got shipped in solid condition, which was way better than CafePress' delivery.

Gonna show this off at work, krewe!!!

I think I got some neat giveaway items for the next comic-con I'll be attending...

Starting To Get a Little Worried About Them Submissions...

Usually by this time I'd be hearing from the Royal Palm Literary Award judges if my submissions passed the Semifinalist status. I put in five items - four blog articles and one short story - so the odds should favor at least ONE of those submissions reaching this stage. 

They've at least emailed back with a "sorry, your submission couldn't qualify" the few times I didn't reach that stage, so I'm still clinging to the hope that the judges this year were probably overwhelmed by local writers catching up during the pandemic stay-at-home months with their works.

Still... I'd like to know if my Murder Hornet story is wowing the critics...