Jeremy Zimmerman's Blog, page 11

Advance Review of Cobalt City Timeslip

In my Google Alerts today, I found that someone had written a review of Cobalt City Timeslip. So if you want a bit of a sneak peek, check it out!

Art vs. Business! Fight!

I've tried to set this blog up so that it automatically posts to Twitter. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, last night I went with the girlfriend to the Cyndi Lauper contest. It was one of several outdoor concerts our local zoo puts on. My girlfriend is a big fan, especially of her older stuff, and I have a few of Lauper's songs that I like a lot. I'm not a huge music geek. I love music, but most of what I love is based more off of nostalgia than technical skill or innovation or whatever. "Gir...

State of the Status

Just a few notes and an update of ye olde honeydew.
My reading at the Wayward seemed to go well. The place was absolutely packed, which stunned me. I'm going to attribute that to the draw of Jennifer Brozek and Cat Rambo. During the reading my mouth lost all moisture instantly and the crowd looked more like a smear of colors than individual faces. And, suffice to say, I was in a mild state of panic.

But everyone told me I did fine. I've been told that enough that I'm starting to believe it.

M...

ArmadilloCon

Lots of stuff to talk about, but that's a different post. I popped on here to pimp the mighty Sanford Allen. He was at the workshop in Kansas with me and the writing he brought to the workshop was some of my favorite stuff that I read. He will be at ArmadilloCon this weekend. He will be doing readings and sitting in on panels. If you are in the South-Central Texas area and are interested in the convention, I encourage you to seek him out.

Running with Chainsaws

Before I dig in with this, I'd like to give a hearty hurrah for Ann Charles, who has just won the Daphne du Maurier award in the unpublished division. Not only did Nearly Departed in Deadwood take first place in the "Mainstream Mystery/Suspense" category, but she was also the overall Daphne winner for that division. Rock on!

My big hurrah coming up is my first honest-to-gosh reading. This is the official blurb:

An Evening of Authors, Wayward Coffeehouse, August 21, 7-10pm.
Hosted by Jennifer Br...

New stories up at Wily Writers

Couple new pieces up at Wily Writers

"Reckoning" by Bruce Golden

"Left Behind" by Mark Tullius

For those unfamiliar with Wily Writers, all of their stories are available in both text and MP3 formats. You can also find the audio versions on iTunes as free podcasts.

PNWA Summer Conference: After Action Report

The weekend before last I attended the Pacific Northwest Writers Association's Summer Conference, four days of writing seminars and pitching to agents and editors.

My short summary is, "This would have been worthwhile if I had been able to really utilize what it offered." Because this came right on the heels of two weeks in Kansas, work was not inclined to give me any more time off. And I was out of vacation hours to boot. Plus, my novel did not get finished. And no agent wants to invest time...

State of the Writing

With the workshop, I haven't updated this in a while. Here's what's going on.

Of the four stories I had floating out there, I've gotten two responses. Crossed Genres turned down "Snowflake War Journal." Which is a shame. I was really hoping to expand Nate's shared world into other markets. My girlfriend has seen some comic book fiction 'zines out there, I may try and send it to them. On the other hand, my new Devil Cat and Imp story for Cobalt City Timeslip has been accepted. I've gotten to ...

I think we learned something important today.

Through the workshop, the same criticisms came up over and over again. On a certain level, I wish I had known some of these things long in advance so that I could have done things differently. It would have been nice to have the basics tackled so that they could critique things on a deeper level.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to read James Gunn's The Science of Science Fiction Writing before I got there, but didn't. I was just too stubborn. It's one thing to have a person you don't...

We're not in Kansas anymore.

I am back in Seattle, parked in front of a fan and enjoying the balmy 65 degree weather. It's a beautiful change in pace from Kansas, where they had a heat index of 110 on some of my final days there. It was just muggy and awful. I'm glad we'd gotten milder weather for most of the early part of my stay. I'd never even heard of a heat index prior to this. Seattle is a civilized place that has no such things.
Friday and Saturday I attended Campbell Conference events. Friday night was the awards...