MileHiCon

As you may remember from my previous post, Hubby and I went to MileHiCon a few weeks ago to celebrate having met there ten years ago.  MileHiCon is a scifi/fantasy/horror convention held in Denver every year.  It's primarily a literary convention, so you'll see a lot more authors and a lot fewer film panels than at other conventions.  I've been attending, off and on, since I was twelve.

I used to attend just for entertainment value, but in recent years I've been far more interested in panels that might help my writing.  This year, we went to some panels on the Future of the Short Story, Writing Believable Combat, and Writing Well With Others.

Joseph Paul Haines, Molly Tanzer, James Van Pelt, Eric James Stone,

and Cynthia Felice in the Future of the Short Story.

We also attended a panel on the best sci-fi short stories published prior to 1980.  As always, they suggested way more than I have time to read (or even remember, although Connie Willis was nice enough to make handouts of her suggestions.)

James Van Pelt, Gardner Dozois (Editor Guest of Honor and editor of Asimov's Science Fiction

from 1984 to 2004,) Van Aaron Hughes (local winner of the Writers of the Future contest,)

John E. Stith, and Connie Willis.

Historically, MileHiCon has had its best programming on Saturday (at least in my opinion,) but this year there were several things I'm sorry I missed on Friday and Sunday--including an hour with Gardner Dozois.  I really would like to have heard more from such an esteemed editor.

Author Guest of Honor Glen Cook, along with several of his books.  My father is a huge fan,

so Mr. Cook graciously helped me figure out a Christmas gift.

We had a fun time, and it was nice to feel connected to the world of sci-fi and fandom again for a while.  We had to take Kal'El with us due to his refusal to take a bottle, and he was as good as gold.  Apart from nursing and sleeping through some of the panels, he was very well-behaved and just played in our laps for the rest of the time.  Lots of people commented on how good of a baby he was--and he was quite generous with smiles as well.  I think he gave several people their baby fix for the week or month.

Our Future Trekkie posing with a Klingon.

We hadn't been to MileHiCon in a few years (especially since Zaxxon's birth, because it's the same weekend as his birthday) and I now realize that I miss it.  Perhaps in another year or two I'll plan Zaxxon's party the weekend earlier, book a room, and attend the whole convention again.  There are always so many good ideas and bits of advice to pick up.

Happy Anniversary again honey!

Quack, Peep, and Chirp

We've already had two big snowstorms this year (ironically on the past two Wednesdays, with warm weather the preceding Monday and cooler weather the preceding Tuesday) and I'm loving the fact that Zaxxon is old enough to appreciate playing in the snow.  We didn't get enough of it last year to do much playing, and the year before that I would bundle him up only to have him start fussing long before I was ready to go in (you can read that to mean before I'd finished shoveling.)  But this year he LOVES it.  Most of our snow sculpting is still done by me, but he helps and enjoys running around, falling in the snow, and eating it.

I seriously doubt anyone reading the blog will recognize these characters (unless our librarian stops by again) but they come from a kids' show called "Peep and the Big Wide World."  Peep (the yellow one) is a chick, Chirp (the red one) is a bird, and Quack (the blue one), if you can believe it, is a duck.  The show basically encourages scientific exploration for kids.  I think it's kind of bizarre, but Zaxxon loves it.  In fact, he loves them so much that I'm already considering them for next year's Halloween costumes (if he still likes them by then, of course.)

So I made them out of snow.  They're pretty easy, considering they're balls (or in Quack's case, an oval.)  What do you think?

Cheap Security or the Uncertain Promise of Something Greater?

Well, I've heard the definitive word on A Glitch in the Continuum.  And I don't know what I'm going to do.

Basically, what it boils down to is this:  I've been offered a quarter of the money I originally agreed to, plus a PDF copy of the book.  If I choose to buy a real copy, I can get it for 40% off the cover price.  So when you factor in the fact that yes, I would like a copy of the book my work appears in, I'd only be making a few bucks.  Token payment.

With the exception of a few pieces of flash that quickly ran out of markets, I never submit to token markets.  Semi-pro is my minimum.  So if Pandora's Time had never been contracted, I wouldn't even have blinked at a market with these terms.  But the fact of the matter is, it's already been accepted to Glitch.  If I don't expend any more energy on this piece, it can have a home in this anthology.

But on the other hand, I placed this story at the third market I submitted it to.  Normally I apply a top-down approach to my submissions:  I submit to pro paying markets first, and then start working through the semi-pros when I exhaust the pro options.  Pandora's Time, however, only went to one pro market.  The other two were both time-travel-themed anthologies, both of which were semi-pro payment, because I thought my odds of success were better in an anthology that fit my story's theme.  And it worked, it was accepted to the second anthology.

Not only that, it was basically accepted with honors.  What I mean by that is, after getting the acceptance, I stopped by the Twisted Library forums to say thanks and see how things were going.  Once there, I was flattered to learn that Pandora's Time was one of three stories that were accepted hands-down.  It took several more weeks (possibly longer, I don't remember the timeline) for the editor to finish sorting through the rest of the submissions.  So I know it was good enough, at least for that editor, to make it right away.  That gives me hope that it could fare well at other markets--particularly since there are several pro-paying markets it's never been to.

I like Pandora's Time, and I think it's one of my stronger pieces.  The Twisted Library even helped me figure out which ending was the best (I'd had trouble figuring out which of many endings to use at first) and I think it's now stronger than it was when I submitted it to Asimov's.

I don't really like the idea of giving my story to a press for so little money and not even getting a bound copy of the book in return.  But there's still the fact that, well...it's already been accepted.  Saying 'yes' to this new press would be a solid, guaranteed credit.  Saying 'no' and resubmitting it could get me more money in the long run, but on the other hand, it could just doom Pandora's Time to sit in slush pile limbo for several years.  As my husband put it, I can either say "No, I'm a professional writer and I deserve to get paid for my work and I will hold out for that," or I can say "Yes, I guess I'll give it away for almost free in order to get another credit and hopefully gain a little more exposure and clout."  This would never have been an issue if these were the original terms, because again, I never would have submitted to it.  But this is how my dilemma now stands.

I'm not asking anyone to tell me what to do, but I am curious what you all would do if placed in the same situation.  Which do you think is more important?

A Writer's Dilemma - How would YOU do it?

After posting yesterday about my abysmal failure to resub my stories, I sat down today, determined to get at least one of them back out.  I chose a story, chose a market, and began the process of making sure I was following all of the editor's preferences in my submission.  When I got to modifying my cover letter, I paused.  For the last few months, my cover letter has stated that my fiction "will appear in 'A Glitch in the Continuum,'" but that statement is no longer true.  I spent a good deal of time trying to decide what's the best way to say that I was supposed to have another credit but the deal fell through.  I only have two credits so far, so each one counts!

(On that note, I've already heard from the editor of Glitch that another publisher is interested in taking the anthology, though at a reduced rate of pay.  There are no details yet as to what publisher or what the rate of pay would be, so I still don't know if it's a deal I'm willing to accept.  More on that when I know.)

At any rate, I wound up saying "I was supposed to appear in "A Glitch in the Continuum" as well, but the press ran out of money."  I'm still not sure if that's the best way to put it, but I really needed to get at least one submission done.

What do you all think?  How would you include something like this in your cover letters?

October Stat Check

During the month of October, I wrote (or edited) on all 31 days
I spent the entire month editing my novel
I made 0 submissions - FAIL!
I received 1 rejection
I learned that one of my sales wasn't getting published, though since then I've heard a tentative possibility, but it would involve a letter sum of money--no details yet
I have 2 stories currently in slush pile circulation
I made 8 blog posts
I took no days off

Analysis:
Writing/editing was okay, though many days only met a bare minimum of my personal requirement.  It was a busy month, what with Zaxxon's third birthday and making Halloween costumes.  Oh, and speaking of costumes, here's a pic of us in our coordinated Family of Crayola Crayons costumes:

Annnyywaaaay...
When it comes to submissions, this month was an EPIC FAIL!  If I recall, my goal last month was to get them all resubbed in the first week.  Well, I didn't do a single sub all month.  Bad, bad, bad.  Hopefully now that Halloween is over and a good deal of the work involved in finishing the other half of our garage is complete, I can get things subbed before the next wave of holiday craziness.  Hopefully.  Because my stories don't get sold by sitting on my computer, gathering virtual dust.

Here's to a slightly-more-productive November!