A few end-of-year updates

December 29, 2011

The time between Christmas and New Years is typically a lull, with few writerly news to report, good or bad. This year my holiday week has been a busy one:

* I received word that my space opera adventure story “The Dragon Ships of Tycho” has been accepted into an anthology it was written for. This was the first time I was invited by an editor to submit something for an upcoming project. I was flattered, and did my best to come up with a quality story that would suit the anthology theme. I submitted in October and received a positive response this week. I can’t share the details, as this anthology has not been officially announced yet by the publisher – but it will be a physical book and it will likely be released in 2012.

* “The Skeptic” will be reprinted in the January issue of Bent Masses. This was the first story I wrote once I decided to take up fiction, and my first story accepted for publication. Originally it appeared at Absent Willow Review – an online magazine that recently closed its doors. They took down all their content, so “The Skeptic” isn’t currently available online. Bent Masses will kindly fix that on January 15.

* Christine Amsden, author of  SF novel “The Immortality Virus” and other speculative works, published a mini-review of my DSF story “Spidersong” on her blog.  She called Spidersong “satisfyingly creepy.” You can read her blog post here.

* I’m very nearly done with “Requiem for a Druid” – my second Conrad Brent yarn. At 6300 words, it’s the longest story I’ve written to date. This is an urban fantasy featuring lots of action, magic, plot twists and horrible puns I shouldn’t be able to get away with. At one point I actually have Conrad utter the phrase “These aren’t the druids you’re looking for.” With the wavy hand motion, and everything. Special thanks to authors Ken Liu, Michael Haynes and Victoria Jakes, as well as a number of my non-writing friends, who all pitched in offering critiques on the story and catching my many embarrassing typos.  I hope to send “Requiem” out on submission by early next week. It should be my first W1S1 submission of 2012!

The year is almost out and I’m planning to do a blog post analyzing my annual submission statistics, but every one of the remaining few days counts and 2011 isn’t over quite yet. There are approximately 20 stories out on submission at the moment, and it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that I will still hear back about one or more of them before January 1st.

 

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Interview at Rick Novy’s Blog

December 15, 2011

Rick Novy was kind enough to interview me on his blog.

Rick is an excellent writer in his own right, with short stories appearing at places like Scott Orson Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show and Flash Fiction Online.  His novel, “Neanderthal Swan Song,” is available for the Kindle at Amazon.com:

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

“The Getaway” sold to Earthbound Fiction

December 9, 2011

Today I signed the contract for and can officially announce the sale of “The Getaway” to Earthbound Fiction.

Earthbound Fiction is a new publisher, soliciting short stories for their SF and Fantasy anthologies. They’re also running a monthly contest, with the winning story posted on their site. Although my story did not win the November contest, they enjoyed it enough to pick up for their forthcoming flash fiction anthology.

“The Getaway” is a tiny flash fiction story and its genre is somewhere between humor and suspense – so it doesn’t fit into either of their current anthologies, so I must assume they’ll be publishing it in a Flash antho sometime later next year. Either way, this is an odd duck of the story that I really like, and I was happy that it found a good home.

This month’s contest is themed. Earthbound is looking for holiday stories under 500 words – so if you have something appropriate, consider sending it their way. After all, the more great stories they buy, the sooner an anthology that includes “The Getaway” can be published 🙂

 

 

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Plan of Attack

December 8, 2011

I like to set myself ambitious goals. When I began writing fiction in the summer of 2010 I had a straightforward yet difficult first target: to sell a story that year. Many freshman writers struggle for years before they accomplish that first sale, but I’m not patient enough to wait that long. Luckily I didn’t have to. I managed to get not one, but two stories published in 2010. Both sold to relatively modest markets, but nothing to be embarrassed by.

I wrote about my 2011 goals over here. I joined Write1Sub1, committing to write one short story every week in 2011. The goal was 10 story sales.  To date, I’ve had a total of 17 short story sales this year, including three to professional markets and a sole reprint to the NJ Board of Education. And the year isn’t even over yet.  I also joined SFWA, which was originally one of my goals for 2012.

So what is it I want to accomplish next year? Here’s a list:

Write longer stuff. I will probably write less stories next year, but they will hopefully be better, longer stories. Flash fiction has become my comfort zone, so I will push myself to write longer fiction until I feel as comfortable in the 3-5K word range as I do in under 1000.

To accomplish this, I will spend more time outlining and plotting each story before sitting down to write it. This is contrary to what I’ve done to date, which is to write mostly by the seat of my pants. I will also continue to participate in Write1Sub1, but at the rate of one story per month instead of one per week.

Be consistent. I will try to write at least 500 new words every day. That’s all-new content – editing previously written manuscripts doesn’t count. My biggest problem this year has been falling off the writing wagon for a few days or even a few weeks at a time. Training myself to write a little daily is a good start to accomplishing all of the other goals.

Upgrade SFWA membership  – I’m currently an associate member. Full membership requires 3+ pro sales totaling $250+. I’m at 2 qualifying sales and around $150 – so a single short story sale or a couple of flash sales to pro markets will put me over the top.

Socialize. I have never attended a science fiction convention, nor met many of my fellow writers in person. Next year I will strive to fix that. We are planning a special launch event for an anthology I’m in (more details on that in January) so I will get to meet folks there, but I also hope to attend at least one major SF con in 2012.

Blog. Now that I have this spiffy WordPress blog, I am resolved to update it regularly. The goal is at least once a week, but possibly even more often if I have something interesting to talk about.

Novel! The above goals aren’t particularly ambitious. But this one is, for me. I’m completely lost and intimidated when it comes to undertaking a novel. As I continue to work on short fiction, I will research, outline and begin writing a novel. I don’t necessarily expect to finish it in 2012. In fact, I probably won’t start on it till later in the year. Until then I will continue to work on improving my writing, read books and articles on the craft, and maybe even attend a workshop.

This post is part of a W1S1 blog chain where a number of Absolute Write regulars talk about their writing goals for 2012 and how they plan to accomplish them.  Samuel Mae started the chain on his blog this morning. Next up is A. G. Carpenter.  Please check out their blogs, and those of all the other excellent people who hang out at the Absolute Write W1S1 sub-forum.

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Writing What You Don’t Know or In the Footsteps of Jules Verne

December 5, 2011

Jules Verne, a science fiction pioneer

Some of the most basic writing advice out there is “show, don’t tell,” “avoid adverbs like the plague” and “write what you know.” While the former two adages are more or less universal, it’s a lot harder for a speculative fiction author to follow the third. After all, what writer could have the first-hand experience navigating a faster-than-light starship, traveling back in time, or casting magic spells?

In most cases a healthy amount of research will do the trick. Jules Verne, renowned for his lush descriptions of exotic and faraway places, hardly ever left his armchair. He learned about Africa, India and other settings outside of Europe by reading books and studying maps. One can only imagine what kind of adventures the grandmaster would have thought up if he had access to the Internet. Or perhaps his productivity would have been stunted by World of Warcraft and Words With Friends – just like the rest of us… Or is that just me? But I digress.

Research is how I cope with writing about stuff I don’t necessarily know much about. I don’t have to become an expert in every field — I just learn enough to fake sounding like one on paper. After all,  if I can’t fake a little knowledge, how can I write convincing accounts of telepathic alien spiders or bad-ass magic wielders on the streets of Brooklyn?

A good portion of my allotted writing time is spent on Wikipedia, looking up various subjects. And the subjects are only getting stranger. Recently some of the stuff I had to look up online for my stories included:

* Manhattan Municipal Building
* Mose the Fireboy
* Persimmons
* Variations of Shakespeare’s “To Be or not to Be” soliloquy in “Hamlet”
* Kaballah and Jewish mysticism
* Sunset Park waterfront
* Sumatra
* Year the JFK airport was renamed as such
* Common Greek names
* Volcanic eruption that destroyed Pompeii.

These aren’t all for the same story (although, if they were, it’d be a doozie!). On second thought, I looked at the list again and SIX of the ten examples I listed are all research for just one story – a sequel to “A Shard Glows in Brooklyn” titled “Requiem for a Druid.” I really doubt anyone would be able to figure out which six, but feel free to give it your best shot in the comments.

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman

Moving On Up

December 2, 2011

Welcome to my new and much improved home on the web.

I finally overcame my inertia and spent a few hours setting up a WordPress blog. After a year+ of putting up with the geriatric dinosaur that is LiveJournal, I feel like Robin Williams’ character in “Moscow on the Hudson” when he gets his first taste of freedom. WordPress is a far more powerful platform. In fact, it can do way more cool stuff than I even know how to use at this time.  As you can see, all the content from the previous blog has been ported over. I also spent a few bucks and registered alexshvartsman.com – so no more clunky web addresses. If you can remember how to spell my surname – which in itself is no small feat – you can find your way over to this page.

Over the next few days I plan to play with my shiny new toy. I’ll check out all the bells and whistles WP has to offer. Who knows, I might even manage to update this blog a little more often. Stay tuned!

 

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Posted by Alex Shvartsman