Writing Wibbles

Oh hey! Remember when I mentioned submitting two drabbles to the Were-Traveler? They were both accepted later that evening, woohoo! I’ll post a link when I get it.

I’m in the middle of a sort of writing break. I say “sort of,” because the flipside to working when you’re staring out the window is that you’re always working. But it’s a good way to fill up 20 minutes of downtime — for example, while I was waiting for choir practice to start I wrote down a few hundred words of a scene in Pickups and Pestilence, where Caitlin talks to Delphinia. That was interesting: after a false start with the opening sentence, I was off to the races. Something that I’ve known for a while but have just now put into words: if the opening isn’t working, start with dialogue. Seems like it works for me every time.

I’ll probably come up with something for #FridayFlash. Maybe something dark, as it’s the season (and I get bigger responses from darker fiction, insert evil laugh here). Speaking of responses, I’m a little disappointed in the (lack of) response to my current #TuesdaySerial. Makes me wonder if it’s that bad, or if it’s not grabbing people the way I’d hoped. I made an ePUB of the complete story and put it on the iPad for Mrs. Fetched to read; she’s found it interesting so far but I was hoping she’d have finished and offered general feedback by now. I’d like to have a couple beta readers check it out (Mrs. Fetched is an alpha reader of sorts).

On the other hand, in the last few days I won the Grand Prize of a big pile of (autographed!) paperbacks in the #LieOrDie event, and scored a couple eBooks in the #TrickOrTweet launch party from Red Iris Books. The latter was a ton of fun — the authors both ended up in Twitter Jail (is that a bird cage?) for posting too much — and I met a couple new tweeple. Tomorrow’s October Horror Spotlight will thus be focused on Red Iris.

Having decided to take a writing break, I’ve turned back to whittling my huge to-read pile. I started with G.P. Ching’s The Soulkeepers, which by coincidence is one of the paperbacks I’ll be getting from the #LieOrDie event. It was a great story — with a flaw or two, of course. But I so identified with Jacob (the main character) that I knew he was about to do something monumentally stupid and had to put the book down for a day because I didn’t want to see! (And I was right.) Yet another book that I need to review. I might combine three reviews into a single blog post this weekend.