Aeryn Rudel's Blog, page 55

Submission Rotation – May 2017

Right now, until I put the finishing touches on a few works in progress, I have five short stories in my submission rotation. Most of these stories have been around the block a few times with varying levels of success. Of course, none of them have been published yet, but the responses they have received are an interesting study on what you might expect when you begin submitting your work.

Here are the stories and the responses they’ve received to date.

Title Length Genre Form Rejections Hi...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 21 Update

Twenty-one weeks into the production of Acts of War: Aftershock, and we have completed a very important step.

Progress: The first and certainly the most extensive round of revisions on the novel is done. After adding a lot of new material and rewriting a number of scenes, the novel has grown a bit. It currently stands at 102,000 words. It’ll likely shrink some in editing, but it should be an easy 350+ pages in its final form.

Revision Roundup: Let’s talk about story, the third major focus for...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 20 Update

Twenty weeks into Acts of War: Aftershock and revisions continue. Here’s how the week went.

Progress: I’ve done quite a bit of work on the book in the last week to ten days. I started by going through the manuscript and addressing all the editors’ comments and suggested changes. Most of that consisted of straightforward and even simple changes, but there were a few scenes I needed to rewrite extensively. Next, I wrote three additional chapters designed to increase the presence of certain char...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 19 Update

Week nineteen, and I am neck-deep in revisions for Acts of War: Aftershock.

Progress: I’m very pleased with the progress I’ve made so far. I’ve revised over a third of the novel at this point, and that includes rewrites of two major scenes. I’m on pace to put this round of revisions to bed in a total of two weeks or so.

Revision Roundup: Today, I’d like to talk about one of three major areas of revision I mentioned in last week’s post: setting continuity. These are often little tweaks and ad...

On Writing Godless

Hey, folks, my writer pal Orrin Grey wrote a book called Godless set in the Iron Kingdoms, the same steam-powered setting as my upcoming novel Aftershock. Orrin is one hell of a writer, and this is one hell of a book. In Orrin’s own words, “This is a fantasy story about war and faith, about knights, robots, monsters, and epistemological uncertainty.” I mean, seriously, what more can you ask for out of a novel?

Orrin talks a bit about the writing process for Godless on his blog, and it’s an in...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 18 Update

Here we are at week eighteen into the production of Acts of War: Aftershock. These updates are going to change a bit as I start working on revisions. More on that below.

Progress: I’m starting revisions on the novel this week–today, actually—so my progress reports will reflect where I’m at with rewrites, scene additions, scene subtractions, and all the myriad little tweaks and adjustments that will turn the book into the final product you’ll be reading on July 12th.

Revision Roundup: The edit...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 17 Update

Seventeen weeks into the production of Acts of War: Aftershock, and the revision process is about to kick into high gear.

Progress: Tomorrow, I’m heading into the Privateer Press offices to discuss revision notes on Aftershock with publications director Mike Ryan and the continuity team, which includes Doug Seacat and Matt Goetz. One of the handy things about living in the same city as your publisher is you can have a face-to-face meetings to make sure we’re all on the same page with any big...

Swings & Misses: The Submission Slump

If you were to look at my acceptance ratio at Duotrope a few months ago, you’d have seen a number of around 20%, meaning, very roughly, that for every ten submission I sent, two would be accepted. In baseball terms, that’s a batting average of .200, which, admittedly, ain’t great for the MLB (the infamous Mendoza line), but from what I understand, it’s not a terrible number for writers.

Well, just like a baseball player, a writer can see his or her average plummet from too many swings and mis...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 16 Update

Sixteen weeks into the production of Acts of War: Aftershock, and here’s the lay of the land.

Progress: The first draft is still under review with the editors at Privateer Press, but as I hinted at last week, I have not be sitting here twiddling my thumbs. This week I put the final revisions on a prequel story called “Confirmed Kill” about the trollkin sniper Corporal Horgrum and his human spotter and CO Sergeant Sharp. Both appeared in Acts of War: Flashpoint and return in Acts of War: After...

Acts of War: Aftershock – Week 15 Update

Week fifteen! Here’s the update on Acts of War: Aftershock.

Progress: I haven’t been idle while waiting for Privateer Press to review the first draft of Acts of War: Aftershock. In fact, I managed to write another 3,000 words in the form of a short story, a prequel of sorts, focusing on one of the secondary character in the novel. More on that soon.

The Best Part: Looking ahead. As I read through the Aftershock manuscript again, I’m getting ideas for the third book in the trilogy, and I’ve be...