Very cool, @Djscman! Congrats!
I’m debating whether to do a little bit of freelancing again, or get serious about putting time into fiction.
The stuff I do is much more Asimov than Edgar Allen, by necessity, but I adore the “Southern Gothic” vibe.
I wrote my new book between Dec 2022 and Feb 2023 and it will be released on Friday. I maintained a pretty good writing pace, something that’s been hard to do over the last few years. Another thing that helped was switching to a real ergo keyboard. My wrists and hands have thanked me every day for getting a Kinesis split board.
I tried something different this time and used ProWritingAid. My editor commented the manuscript was really clean. It now directly integrates in Word and Scrivener. It can be buggy and lose track of its own edits. It’s great overall and worth the yearly subscription. They just integrated ChatGPT so you can now highlight a sentence and hit rephrase. There are some cool options. Before you cry foul, I found it worked best to help me instead of rewriting my work. It doesn’t work if your sentence has certain words like kill or any curse words.
This is the last book cover my friend Eloise made for me. She got out of the biz and is now heading up a game studio.
Nice work and congrats on the new book in your series. I need to make time to read some of your stuff. I get a bit of a Harry Turtledove vibe from a few of them. I know I enjoyed a few of his and I’m thinking your stuff would be easily digestible.
I have to type daily but not anywhere near the volume you probably put in for that book. Does just splitting the keyboard help or is there more to the Kinesis there like specific wrist help, etc?
I’m a huge Turtledove fan but I’ve only done one alternate history book. His alien invasion in WWII books were so good. I have his new one, 3 Miles Down on my Kindle ready to read as soon as I finish reading some Stephen R. Donaldson.
Woohoo, just got word that a short short of mine has been accepted by the site Sci-Fi Shorts. This is my first ever paid sale (other than the two dozen or sales of my self-published novel). The editor’s comment consisted of two words: “Solid story.”
Thank you to @Miramon for telling me (a long time ago) about the submission tracking site The Grinder. Just recently, after struggling for the past couple of years to write a second novel, I decided to return to writing short fiction. I decided to get serious about a) creating new pieces, b) dusting off old pieces, and c) using the Grinder to grind it out and start submitting constantly (and re-submitting when they come back rejected).
So I launched my new effort last week, sending out four older stories in the space of a couple of days, all short shorts, and this acceptance by Sci Fi Shorts was one of the four. (In fact, I had never heard of Sci-Fi Shorts, but found it on the Grinder). Not sure when this will appear, but I’ll try to post it here when it does.
Thanks again to @Miramon and all the others here whose perseverance is inspiring.
Excellent! Congratulations!
Fantastic news! Congratulations. And paid, too? Damnnnnnnn, that’s the ticket.
New story out today, a mere 18 months after acceptance. But some cool old-timer big names on the Galaxy’s Edge table of contents along with me. My little flash story “Ship of the Gods” wonders if the mythological Thor might take some inspiration from the Marvel movies and Chris Hemsworth.
That’s some good company you’re in! Congrats!
The Grinder change its logo for April Fools Day
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And another story publication today, too! In Kaleidotrope, “With Respect to the Cat”.
https://kaleidotrope.net/spring-2023/with-respect-to-the-cat-by-laurence-raphael-brothers/
Crosstime story inspired by Connie Willis’ great novel To Say Nothing of the Dog.
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I ‘liked’ your post since likes are active today! Congrats!
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Oh, nice. I didn’t even notice the likes had been turned on. I <3 your post and another. I hope to <3 a few more.
A short short of mine, “Bagged,” was published today at the site SciFiShorts.co. It’s a paywalled site but this link should get you in! Read it in two minutes!
I read it. Good story. Congrats on the publication.
Nice work. I read it too. Congratulations on the publish.
The last line is excellent
Thanks all! Appreciate the positive feedback.
Back in March I’d submitted two drabbles (100 word stories) to an open call for a drabble anthology from a small publisher, and today I found out both were accepted. Not sure when it’ll publish, but even having one accepted would have been nice!