Renee Carter Hall's Blog, page 12

One month on...

Well, By Sword and Star has now been available for just over a month. Unfortunately, sales so far have been slower than I hoped for (yeah, I know this is the sort of thing that authors probably aren't supposed to mention in their blogs), but I'll be putting an ad up on FurAffinity soon, which tend to get a good amount of traffic according to the stats, and the first four chapters of the book are now in audio form via the Anthro Dreams podcast, so my publisher and I are hoping that'll snag it a little more attention from its target audience. On the brighter side, I did also finally get my first reader review on Amazon (which was also cross-posted to Goodreads), and -- besides, of course, being pleased that it was positive -- I know that'll help potential readers decide if it's something worth picking up.

In non-book-related writing news, I did recently get a short story acceptance from the UK-based horror magazine Black Static , which will publish my story "Horseman" in their next issue if everything works out. (I believe this will have the distinction of being my first short story sale in foreign currency.) "Horseman" was originally accepted to an anthology that folded, so it's good to have a home for it again -- especially one that Ellen Datlow apparently once called "the most consistently excellent horror magazine published." This is particularly interesting considering that I've never really thought of myself as a horror writer, as much as I often enjoy reading the genre -- but in the end, I'll let the readers decide if the story qualifies as horror, dark fantasy, whatever. *shrug*

I'm also working on a rewrite of another short story for a pro-level market, one I'm really really really keeping my fingers crossed about, but we'll see.

At this point, my writing time seems to mostly be about trying to find some kind of balance -- between time spent promoting By Sword and Star and time spent writing, deciding which project (out of several) to work on next, and figuring out how much I should concentrate on promoting By Sword and Star to the furry fandom (which is, after all, the audience I was writing it for, from the very first draft), and how much I dare to strike out and try to promote it elsewhere, even at the risk of people not getting the whole talking-animal-people thing and/or ripping the thing to shreds. It's been stressful at times lately, but I'm hoping it'll all pay off in the end, in one way or another.

I did have one fun experience last Friday, that I'll close with... I was browsing in Barnes & Noble and found myself in front of the science fiction/fantasy anthology section -- and there on the shelf was a copy of Bewere the Night , with my story "Swear Not By the Moon" inside. So far, that's only the second time my work has been published in something that you could actually walk into a bookstore and pick up, so it was kind of nice to stand there in B&N and open the book up to page 302 and see the story that I remembered scribbling down in a notebook a couple years ago. :) If the brick-and-mortar bookstores survive, maybe one of these days I'll still get to have that experience with a book of my own instead of just a short story in an anthology.

In the meantime, though, I have a rewrite to get to...

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Win a signed copy of By Sword and Star!

I'm running a giveaway on Goodreads, open to entries from now until April 13th, for a free signed paperback copy of By Sword and Star. The only catch is that, if you win the copy, you're strongly encouraged to write a review of it on Goodreads (since that's basically why authors and publishers do the giveaways).

You do need to be a Goodreads member to enter, but it's free to register on the site and only takes a couple minutes. Once you're signed up, just click on the link below to get to the book's giveaway page.

Good luck!

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/23124-by-sword-and-star

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By Sword and Star now available from Anthro Dreams

It's official! My anthropomorphic fantasy novel By Sword and Star is now available from Anthro Dreams. More info and ordering links:

http://www.anthrodreams.com/wordpress/2012/03/20/by-sword-and-star/



Many, many thanks to my editor Will Sanborn, book designer Jessie Tracer, and cover artist Sara Miles for all their hard work in getting this published.

The first four chapters can be read on my website.

And if you're on Goodreads, so is the book. :) I'm planning on doing two giveaways of free signed copies via Goodreads, so keep an eye out for those in the coming weeks.

I'll have a lot more introspective stuff to say about all of this later on over the next couple days, but for the moment I'm still running around the Internet making announcements. :) (Retweets, reposts, suggestions of possible review venues, and general signal boosting are all very much appreciated, since I have a rather limited marketing budget.)

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Two poems based on prompts...

I haven't written much poetry over the last several years, but in the past few weeks, my poetry muse seems to have finally returned from a long vacation. Since I haven't shared much original work here -- and since I'm not really eager to go back to sending poems out for publication -- I thought I'd post them. The first, written last month on the prompt of "shadows"...


February 1: Groundhog Goes to the FoodMart


Mrs. Fox, pushing her cart
in her best Sunday dress, string of pearls
at her red throat, reminds him
of the tenderness of spring chickens,
gives him a smile, white and sharp.

The Rabbit family crowds the cereal aisle.
As he chooses a plain cylinder of oatmeal,
Mother Rabbit says hello, steers the small talk
toward the petunias she's planning
to brighten up the burrow,
the rows of cabbages and carrots
Father's mapping out for the field.
The kits tug on Groundhog's overalls, eyes bright,
whispering to him, one more snow,
one more afternoon of sledding, one more fort,
one more snowbunny with mittens for ears.

Sleepy-eyed Bear shuffles in, only nods
when anyone speaks, gets in line
with a quart of milk and a canned ham.
His bleary gaze meets Groundhog's,
and he adds a can of coffee, economy size.

Groundhog waits in line, stares at the tabloids
while the chattering squirrel cracks gum
and rings up the shoppers ahead.
He feels their eyes on him, all watching as if
he could melt the gray slush outside with a glance,
could give them warmth and new life on a whim.
Even in this harsh fluorescent light,
he will not look at his feet.



And the second, for the prompt "the end"...


And Then What


The castle crumbled in ivy,
and wild sleek things with moon-bright eyes
prowl the ruins after dark.
The seventh son of a seventh son
had a dimpled baby girl
who married the miller's boy and did
nothing of any consequence.
The castle mice forgot how to talk.
The queen's grey cat still knew but held her tongue.
The fairies fell to dust, but some
became moths and dragonflies, beetles,
graceful and deadly spiders. Their queen
is a yellow bird with black-tipped wings.
She sings sometimes in the orchard
that's gone to seed, perched on a branch
of golden pears, half of them rotting on the ground.
And now you ask, is there magic yet?
Is there any more to tell?
I know that look too well, that hope
that shines as sharp as a new-made sword.
That's all, I say. There's nothing more.
This world is old, and it's tired; close your eyes
and go to sleep.
None of the frogs singing in the twilight
were ever princes. The mice will not show you
the secret door. That key under your pillow
won't open it. Child,
don't you know all stories end?

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Stopping in for a quick update...

Things have been busy lately, and updating the blog tends to get pushed to the bottom of the to-do list, but here are a few quick notes:

I've added another Anthro Dreams podcast to my website's audio page. "Sweet Nothings" is a bit of slice-of-life furry flash fiction originally written in response to the writing prompt "the ice cream shop." (While you're there, you can also check out the holiday-themed fantasy piece "An Older World," which I completely forgot to announce here when it first came out.)

Publication of By Sword and Star is moving along steadily; we're waiting for print proofs now, and the first chapters of the novel will also appear in the Anthro Dreams podcast as a teaser. Unless there are any unforeseeable snags, it looks like it'll be available next month. (I'm planning on taking pre-orders for signed copies starting soon; watch this space.)

The Odyssey online class I took this past month has wrapped up. It felt like it went by pretty fast, so it's kind of hard to evaluate how much I learned from it when I'm still absorbing some of the info. (I was, of course, reminded that I still hate critique, much as I recognize it as a necessary evil... but somehow I expect that's always going to be the case.) *shrug* At any rate, I can get focused now on coming up with a workable writing routine again and getting some momentum back that I lost over the last few months.

Finally, have a fun video. Bert knows what it's like to live with a writer... XD




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Video: Giorgio at Sonic

So, as may already be obvious, I'm doing away with the Friday Finds, at least for now, and will just try to stop in here and make general updates a bit more often. I'll still share links and videos and whatever as I run across them, but I haven't had as much time as I'd like lately to browse for things, so the weekly schedule was fast becoming just another obligation.

With that said, here's something fun I just watched. I've never worked in food service, but I have worked retail jobs, and I love seeing stuff like this. What I really love about it is that it isn't some kind of snarky prank that plays on making fun of the employee -- after all, these people are just trying to do their jobs, and a lot of the time the job just sucks. But this isn't about making fun of anyone; from what I can tell, it's just plain making fun, something that's often in short supply these days.

And so I give you the best Sonic order ever:



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Friday Finds: Video - "The Butterfly Dragon" by Sushan Yue

Again, a lot of the people who are likely to read this journal have probably already seen this, but I know there are some who haven't. (Besides, things like this are worth watching even when they're not the big viral thing of the moment.)

Interpretations of this animation vary, but this has been quoted as a comment from the artist:

"As for the story: the butterfly dragon, a symbol of imagination, enables the little deer creature to express his creativity by teaching him how to paint. The mask, representing the deer's imagination, is blessed by the dragon and transforms him into a creature similar to the butterfly dragon. Essentially it's about unlocking the 'god' inside us all. :)"

The artist's website can be found here.

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Goals for 2012

On tap writing-wise for this year:

1. Complete the first draft of The Second Life of Bartholomew T. Lion.
(This is the novel begun for Camp NaNoWriMo last August.) Ideally I'd like to do this in the first half of the year, so I can maybe get a couple beta reads and get going on revisions in the second half of the year.

2. Release at least 2 more stories/collections via Smashwords and Amazon's Kindle store.
"Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters" sold reasonably well last year, and I'd like to expand my self-published ebook presence a bit this year, while still pursuing traditional publishing opportunities.

3. Get a professional head shot taken.
The photo I'm currently using was always meant to be something of a placeholder, so I'd like to replace it with a more polished one... preferably sometime when I've just gotten a good haircut and I'm looking all spiffy. ;)

4. Enter the Writers of the Future contest every quarter this year.
I managed to get in an entry in quarter 3 last year... though I didn't make it past the first round. (I figure this goal might serve a dual purpose and encourage me to complete at least four of my current short-stories-in-progress this year.)

As far as traditional resolutions go, they're pretty much the same thing I struggle with generally: 1) getting writing off the bottom of the to-do list and making it part of my routine again, and 2) trying not to be quite so desperately envious of other writers I know who (in the little world of my mind) are succeeding at everything I'm failing at. >_< We'll see how that goes, but all in all, I'm putting more faith in the goals than the resolutions.

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2011 goals in review...

They say the first step of keeping your resolutions is to look back on what worked and didn't worked in the past year's resolutions. With that in mind, I figured I'd do a recap of my 2011 writing goals.

1. Finish at least one short story per month.
This worked pretty well until summertime, when I wound up focusing on my novel revision plus my Camp NaNoWriMo novel, and never got my short story rhythm back. It still strikes me as a very reasonable goal -- as long as I'm not trying to write a novel at the same time. That said, it's getting more and more frustrating trying to sell short stories to magazines, so I think 2012 is going to be more about longer forms of writing for me.

2. Submit to at least three markets on my "someday" list.
Accomplished this with no problems. Didn't get accepted by any of them, but at least got a couple of encouraging rejection letters that made me feel as if the goal of being published in another professional-level magazine isn't totally out of reach. :)

3. Put at least one long short story/novella up for sale on Smashwords.
Done. You can find "Real Dragons Don't Wear Sweaters" both at Smashwords and in Amazon's Kindle store.

4. Work on my website (add bio, sample stories and poems, etc).
Websites are always a work in progress, of course, but as far as the website serving as an online portfolio where people can get a better idea of who I am and what I write, plus a way to find out where they can get more of what I write, things are pretty well set up. From here on out, it's going to be adding and tweaking, instead of flat-out building.

5. Create enough visual art/craft items to be able to finally open an Etsy shop.
This is the only one that I didn't get much done on. I did sign up for Etsy and even spent a few hours putting a banner together for the shop, but I only made one greeting card, and then art kept getting pushed to the side in favor of writing projects. I'd still like to get back into art again, especially the little sorts of things that would sell on Etsy, so I'm tempted to carry this goal over into this year. At the same time, though, I'm finding that art can be frustrating for me these days because my skills aren't where they need to be, and as much as I try to tell myself to just draw things for myself and get a feel for it again, at this point I feel more accomplishment and satisfaction by using my creative energy for writing.

2012 goals coming soon...

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Friday Finds: Poetry - "The Invitation" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

Apparently this poem has been making the rounds since about 1994, but I first encountered it when it was posted to the poetry community here on Dreamwidth.

http://poetry.dreamwidth.org/108156.html

You can find more about the poet and her other works at her website:

http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

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