6 posts tagged “tansu”

Another nice rejection from Sybil's Garage, this one for TANSU:

We enjoyed your story, however, it's not quite right for the magazine.

There's some nice writing and descriptions, and I liked the concept of "furniture magic"--though I thought that it should have been introduced as early as possible in the story (well before page 7). I wish you luck with this piece and hope you'll try us again in the future.

I can see his point about introducing the 'furniture magic' earlier, but the only way I can think of doing that is to cut off the beginning, maybe begin the story as they reach Jamako's house.  While I have considered doing that... I don't know.  I kind of like the start as it is.  Something to ponder, though, while I also ponder where to send this story next.

Both times now I've got this "almost, but not quite there" response from Sybil's Garage, which is heartening but also (obviously) a touch annoying.  They're closing for submissions on January 15th and I don't have anything else I think is suitable, but maybe next year when they re-open I'll have something.

Amusing story from work:  The cute young Shift Running Manager was telling me that Dave, one of the other crew members at work who will at some point in the near future be taking his Floor Manager exam, was considering cheating on his mock.  Aside from the obvious pointlessness of cheating, the cute young Shift Running Manager wanted to know how he intended to do this.  Dave replied that he would type 'AMC exam' into google and see what came up.  Well, cute young Shift Running Manager did this and guess what he found at the top of the hits?  My blog.  Apparently he had an amusing time reading it, and particularly loved my posts about Verity back in the summer.

Tee hee.  I have no idea if he still reads it, or if that's a one-off, but now I have to call him the cute young Shift Running Manager and mention him as much as realistically possible. 

The less amusing part of my shift on Tuesday was scraping ice off my car at midnight while wearing a short skirt and a thin fleece over my shirt and vest.  Knowing my luck, I'll be doing the same thing tonight and tomorrow night too.  Oh joy. 

Writerly Update

Rejection from Shimmer for TANSU.  They said:

I thought the strongest part of the story was the woman's ability to enter the furniture; that's a neat idea, and those passages held my attention very well. But I'm afraid the rest of the story did not live up to the potential of those parts. It all felt rather too convenient.

I'm not entirely sure what's convenient about it.  The only thing I can think of is that they assumed Bunia was the only person with that ability, thus it's convenient she was chosen to evaluate the furniture because she was the only one who could find out the secret.  Which means I'll be slipping in a mention that she's not the only person with this ability.  Other than that, I can't think of anything.  Once I've gone back through the story, I think I'll send it to Sybil's Garage.

I have a feeling that an entry for the Shimmer pirate issue isn't going to happen, but as the deadline is end of January there's time yet, I suppose.  Just that so far I've had the faintest of faint inklings of a plot, and I need somewhat more before I can write it. 

However, I have been working on an entry for the Iris Print 'fairy tales and fantasy' anthology, which has a deadline of 15th January.  Originally I was going to write something that followed on from SNOWDROPS, and some time I might still write the piece, but yesterday I changed my mind.  After having so much fun with the 'Juniper-Tree' fairy tale, I decided I would play around with pre-existing fairy tales / mythologies, and as I've recently stumbled across a literary form called a Triptych (where the story consists of three short stories that have some kind of connection, thematic or character or whatever - similar idea to the art form) I decided I'll tell the story in that way.  So there'll be three stories about relevant parts of the life of Isouso, my main character, and that includes the development of a relationship with another guy.  So far I've drawn on 3 Brothers Grimm tales, and there's a selkie and Baba Yaga too - and it's being wicked fun to write.   Tentative title is A TRIPTYCH.

PA is decidedly on a break.  I don't want to call it hiatus, but it's on a break.  I think I need more time before I go back to it. 

Sex, Money and... what else was it?

The cute young Shift Running Manager also thought my blog needs more sex, money and something else.  Well, can't deliver on the thing I can't remember, and nothing exciting is happening in my bank account (it's positive, hooray!), but I can deliver on the sex side of things.

- Skip the rest of this if you don't care about / don't want to know about my sex life -

So there's this guy I went to Sixth Form with (last 2 years of high school), and from pretty much the first week there's been a bit of sexual tension between us.  It's waxed and waned over the years since, but it's been there, and we made out back in 2004 but didn't do much.  When he came down to Karim's 21st we were flirting, and he offered sex, but I declined (wanted to enjoy the party with all my friends, not with just him), and he kissed another girl (he's a manwhore).  Then, at Andy's party last Friday night, we went back to my flat together and had sex.

And considering the years of sexual tension, and his bragging that he's amazing, it was.... pretty fucking anticlimatic really.  Sure, it wasn't awful, but I suspect that's more to do with me having gone 3 months without before that, so it was like "OMG penis wooooowwww.... that's it?".  I somehow doubt I'll be sleeping with him again. 

Oh, I also kissed a Chinese guy called Kenneth at the same party.  Just a little chaste kiss on the lips, but we'd been sort of flirting earlier, and we exchanged mobile numbers.  I have no idea if I actually want to go anywhere with him, but heh, we'll see. 

That's all!

I passed my Floor Manager's test with an average of 95% (the pass-mark was 80%).  Hooray!  It's particularly hooray because was I convinced I'd failed.  To pass I needed above 80% in two sections, and I thought I'd not managed 80% in one of them - the multiple choice paper.  There were a whole load of questions I didn't know the answer to, and had to make educated guesses.  Fortunately, seems enough of my educated guesses turned out correct.  And now I can forget all that useless info.  Hooray!

While I've finally recovered from my vicious cold, I think I'm still suffering residual fatigue.  I said I've have my essay done by the extended deadline of today but I've only written 1,000 words out of 2,500, and they're not particularly great words either.  I just can't seem to focus for more than ten seconds at a time.  I'm going to have to work my arse off this week to get both this essay done, and done well because it's assessed, and also attempt my other essay, which matters less because it doesn't count towards my final grade.  Yuck.

I've been submitting short stories in the past few days.  TANSU was rejected by Fantasy Magazine, so I sent it on to Shimmer.  I subbed A SHADE OF YELLOW to Ideomancer webzine and EMPIRES AND GLASS to the Sails and Sorcery anthology.  I rewrote my one non-genre short story, FLIGHT, and subbed it to Edifice Wrecked webzine.  Over the weekend, I finished rewriting an old fanfiction into a short story called LET ME FALL (with different characters and setting to the fanfic, of course), but I'm not entirely sure yet where I'll send it, considering it's a bit slashy and quite angsty and the specfic-ness is very much in the background.  And finally, I've been working on A FAY OF STEAM and hope to have it sent off to Cabinet des Fées in the next few days. 

Future short story projects are:

• Something for Shimmer's pirate issue.  I've decided to take a character from A FAY OF STEAM, Roseilda, and tell part of her story for this.  The deadline is 31st January, but I aim to get this done in the next fortnight or so. 
  
• Iris Print, a publisher of boys' love, is open for submissions to a fairytale/fantasy anthology of boys' love short stories, and I've written just over a page of a story for this.  Deadline is 15th January.
• I still intend to give the On the Premises thing a go.  I've written part of that story, and will finish it sometime.  Deadline is 31st January.

And, of course, I need to get back to PAINTED ANGELS in the near future.  Not to mention catching up on all the dissertation reading I've not done in the past three weeks because of my cold, and reading and writing for another essay over the holidays, and working under the Golden Arches so I can eat and buy books next term.  Oh, and I need to find a job for when I graduate.  BIG EWWW!!!!  I've decided on publishing now, and need to start sorting all that out.  After essays, though. 

But at least my birthday is coming up - I'll stop being a teenager in, oooh, 15 days, woooo!!!!  Sadly there are no Wiis left, but my brother is buying me the Legend of Zelda game anyway and I'm going to save my Christmas and birthday money to buy a Wii when more are made.  I'm also getting money from my parents to go to Venice with the uni history society.  I don't know anyone on the trip, but who the hell cares?  Venice!!! 

Received an email from Sybil's Garage today, rejecting A Shade of Yellow.  The only reason they gave is that it

"felt more like the opening chapter of a novel than a complete short story."

I can understand why they would feel that way, as the story does leave some loose ends open (enough that I am considering writing more short stories in the setting sometime in the future), but I also think it ties up enough to be considered a standalone.  Likely it's borderline, and some magazines will have the same concern as SG while others won't.  As I don't feel I can tell the story in any other way, I'm going to leave the story as it is and hope that I find a magazine in the latter camp. 

SG also said

"Your writing shows a lot of promise and I would encourage you to consider us in the future"

which is almost enough to make me send Tansu their way before sending it elsewhere, but not quite.  If SG is still open for submissions once Fantasy Magazine and Shimmer have rejected Tansu, then I'll send it - but to be honest, they'll probably be closed by then.  Oh well, there's always next year and maybe then I'll have a suitable story. 

I've re-read the two stories and will re-read them once more tomorrow morning before sending them off to the magazines: Apex Digest for A Shade of Yellow and Fantasy Magazine for Tansu.  Hopefully one of them will net a sale. 

So far, so good, and that's up to the early hours of this morning.  I haven't written any in what I really consider today - I need to do some uni work first before I get stuck back into my story.  Aside from what I mentioned in my previous post, I've only been working on the longer D'sil story, currently untitled, and I intend to continue doing so until a first draft of it is complete because I headed back over to the website of the anthology I will submit it to and found that the deadline is earlier than I remembered: 15th December, not sometime in January.  Fortunately I know pretty much exactly what will happen - not the exact specifics of who says what, but a lot more than just bones - so I shouldn't have any trouble completing this.

Adding icing to the cake, Bunia has been nudging me.  About a week ago, or maybe less, Bunia and D'sil informed me by way of coy glances at each other that they wish to be in a novel together.  And here I thought their worlds were seperate!  Well, not any more, and I intend to write a novel in which Bunia goes on a quest to find an exciting piece of furniture and in which D'sil does.... stuff.  I don't know what yet.  So, with my attention focused on D'sil, Bunia has been getting a bit excited.  She is quite a vocal muse, but she needs to understand that I can't work on her novel yet because a) I have other things to do, like finish Painted Angels, and b) I don't really know what's going to happen in her novel.

Hopefully she will be temporarily placated by the extra bit of work I intend to put into her short story, Tansu, before sending it away to Fantasy magazine of the gorgeous covers.  I received some wonderful critique from the Lady of Buns and when I gain a greater lead over my Nano target I'll make the changes.  I aim to have sent Tansu away within a week's time. 

Yesterday, on kind of a whim, I decided to send off Digital Dialogue, a 600-word short story told only in dialogue that I wrote for an informal contest, to this magazine.  If it earns a string of rejections, or if a magazine gives me a personal rejection saying that it should be more than just dialogue, then I'll add non-dialogue narrative; at the moment I can't be bothered, and I don't see the harm in sending the thing off in the meantime.  I quite like it as just dialogue, anyway, but I suppose rejections will probably change my mind. 

Right. 

Must stop procrastinating, must get some uni reading done, and then I can get on with more Nano-ing!  And at some point I need to do some beta-ing.  I have fallen very far behind on that.  My apologies to Rhi, and also to the other two lovely ladies (who almost certainly won't be reading this blog, but heh); I will get round to it eventually. 

I'm stuck on PA again, though I'm not entirely sure why.  I'm getting to some good stuff now - finding out something very important, and then Trifmara's reaction to that.  And, soon, a big battle near Katina which will be followed by the final battle at Krak'vi. 

I think maybe I'm worried it's starting to drag a bit, that I should wrap it up faster, even though the sensible part of my mind says to just write the damn chapters and then go back and make changes.  Blegh.  It's probably just the same "getting towards the end" mental block I get when I approach the end of anything long - happened with my finished piece of mystery crap that will one day be totally reworked, and also with Statues. 

In the meantime, I've been working on short stories:

Statues - Still waiting for a response from Writers of the Future.  I reckon I'll hear from them January-ish, maybe later.  If they don't like it, I'll send it to Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine.

A Shade of Yellow - Still waiting to hear back from Sybil's Garage.  No news is, I hope, good news; a suggestion that they're having to think about what to do with my story.  If they reject it, I'll send to Apex Digest.

Tansu - This is finished and ready for submission, but I'm waiting for Sybil's Garage to respond because if they don't want aSoY then I'll send them this.  If not, I intend to send this to Shimmer.

Snowdrop - A flash fiction of 99 words, submitted to Flash Shot.  Still waiting for a response.

The Beautiful Collection - A fantasy short, just over 1,000 words, that I began in the summer and finished the other day.  I'm not completely happy with it yet, but when it's done I think I'll submit it to Midnight Street first. 

I'm also working on two pirate stories, one for Shimmer and one for Sails and Sorcery.  Both feature my latest muse, D'sil, a mercenary-pirate type.  He's certainly an interesting man to have around.  And my cross-dressing muse will have a short story of his own, but I can't figure out quite how to start it.  

My ambition is to have found a home for all of these stories by the time I submit PA to publishers. 

In the immediate future, November is nearly upon us, which means that Nanowrimo approaches...  I've pretty much decided to write a first draft of Our Green Fairies for this, simply because I feel that if I can get a first draft of it done, no matter how crappy it'll be, at least I'm one step closer to having another finished novel.

I am writing.  Just slowly at the moment.