Ray Daley's Blog, page 15

What’s currently in submission in 2018 #11

As the last one was in November I thought I’d update you.

What’s currently out in submission?

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Acceptances:- Super Fake to Future Syndicate II.

Rejections:- 215 in total, at moment of making this post.

Publications:- Nothing this month.

Withdrawals:- None this month.

30 stories now out there.

What’s currently in submission in 2018 #10

As the last one was in October (I forgot to put that up here at the time, I’m really sorry) I thought I’d update you.

What’s currently out in submission?

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Acceptances:- How Have The Mighty Fallen to Insignia & The Razors Edge to The Weird & Whatnot. I’m guessing neither of those will come out this year.

Rejections:- 211 in total, at moment of making this post.

Publications:- Nothing this month.

Withdrawals:- None this month.

33 stories now out there.

What’s currently in submission in 2018 #9

As the last one was in September I thought I’d update you.

What’s currently out in submission?

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Acceptances:- None this month.

Rejections:- Again, too many to count.

Publications:- Not According To Design is out!

Withdrawals:- None this month.

35 stories now out there.

Patrolling In An Afghan Wonderland (2018 version)

Patrolling In An Afghan Wonderland

By Ray Daley.

27/11/2018

Sand’s too bright, it’s just glistening

Past the wire, Dickers listening,

The desert is shite, Looks crappy tonight

Patrolling in an Afghan wonderland.

Gone away, the gozome bird

Here to stay, the radar dome bird

But it feels so wrong, As we go along

Patrolling in an Afghan wonderland.

In the compound we can’t build a snowman

Pretend we’re not eating Biscuits, Brown.

Ask us if we’re worried, We’ll say no man!

Just tell us that the Op is drawing down?

Later on, We’ll conspire

To ask IS, for a ceasefire.

Will the brass stand us down, then pass beers around?

Patrolling in an Afghan wonderland.

Sleigh bells ring, Are you listening?

With AK’s; the country’s bristling

Can we please go home? Leave this place alone,

Patrolling in an Afghan wonderland.

THE END

Summing Up NaNoWriMo 2018

It’s day 23, and I have won.

I made the call to take part quite late into October, so I had about a week and a half to prepare, fortunately I knew I wasn’t going to be writing a novel, I was taking the rebellion route of short stories.

I’ve won 2 camps with short stories, so I had a fairly high expectation of success.

Planning:- I took a few days to find some outlines, ideas & image prompts. I didn’t find 30 because I didn’t expect to be writing one story every day. My hope was to go well over the daily word count.

Doing the damn thing:-

Day 1 & 2, I wrote a superhero origin story. I’d had the idea for this a few yrs ago so I had a decent outline to work off. 4635 words in the 2 day period.

Day 3, An idea about a spaceship. Another one I’d had a while back, it wrote fairly easily. 2463 words.

Day 4, An idea I had after getting a cold call to the house by phone. 2072 words.

Day 5 & 6, A fairystory retold and reimagined. 3910 words.

Day 7, Another superhero story, but told from a totally different point of view. 2658 words.

Day 8, They say write what you know, so I used some of my military experience. 2625 words.

Day 9 & 10, I’ll admit, I struggled to write anything. 713 words.

Day 10, I managed to find my stride later in day 10. 2346 words.

Day 11, Quite an easy day off a good image prompt. 2094 words.

Day 12, A weird story off something I kept mistyping. Well, it made me laugh. 1340 words.

Day 13, Another fairly easy day off an image prompt. 2430 words.

Day 14, My first day where I wrote nothing. 0 words.

Day 15, Another of my odd survival stories. 3272 words.

Day 16, It started out as a western, & went a totally different way. 1996 words.

Day 17, Me rewriting Day Of The Triffids, I guess? 1743 words.

Day 18, An experiment in story tellling, but in a new way. 2255 words.

Day 19, The first story was just odd. 1702 words. As was the second. 4002 words.

Day 20, Not the first time I’ve gone with a weird idea. 2165 words.

Day 21, Rather than write nothing, I wrote something short. 620 words.

Day 22, A prison story. 1690 words. And something about a maze. 3003 words.

Day 23, And a short story about space to finish. 1090 words.

Total word count 50824.

So This Was October…

We’ve already reached the end of the tenth month of 2018.

So what’s happened so far?

SALES:- I’ve made 4 sales so far. To Third Flatiron; “The Doomsday Machine Retires” for their Monstrosities anthology, to WolfSinger Publications; “Muse” for their Cat Tails anthology, to Mythic Magazine; “Not According To Design” and most recently “The Girl On Platform Two” to Jouth Anthology.

ACCEPTANCES THAT AREN’T SALES:- I’ve also had an acceptance from Insignia for Volume7 of their up-coming flash anthology. This wasn’t a sale, there’s no money involved.

SUBMISSIONS:- I’ve already submitted 228 stories this year.

REJECTIONS:- I’ve had 208 rejections so far.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS:- Insignia Volume 5 is now on sale. Mythic Magazine is also on sale. Jouth Anthology is also now on sale.

My latest credit is still to go up on ISFDB.

My total of new stories written this year so far is now 84.

I’ll apologise that this has appeared a little later than it normally would on account of how I decided to take part in NaNoWriMo in the last few weeks of October. I’m doing okay so far, I’m still a little ahead of schedule but struggling daily with motivation.

More on that in a proper post next month.

So This Was September…

We’ve already reached the end of the ninth month of 2018.

So what’s happened so far?

SALES:- I’ve made 4 sales so far. To Third Flatiron; “The Doomsday Machine Retires” for their Monstrosities anthology, to WolfSinger Publications; “Muse” for their Cat Tails anthology, to Mythic Magazine; “Not According To Design” and most recently “The Girl On Platform Two” to Jouth Anthology.

SUBMISSIONS:- I’ve already submitted 198 stories this year.

REJECTIONS:- I’ve had 186 rejections so far.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS:- Insignia Volume 5 is now on sale. Mythic Magazine is also on sale. Jouth Anthology is scheduled for release on 1st November 2018.

My latest credit is still to go up on ISFDB.

My total of new stories written this year so far is now 71.

What’s currently in submission in 2018 #8

As the last one was in August I thought I’d update you.

What’s currently out in submission?

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Acceptances:- 1. Sold “The Girl On Platform Four” to Jouth Anthlogy.

Rejections:- Again, too many to count.

Publications:- Not According To Design is now out!

Withdrawals:- 1. From Kasma Magazine.

27 stories now out there.

So This Was August…

We’ve already reached the end of the eighth month of 2018.

I’ll start with an apology. There was no “So This Was July…” because I was taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo (and absolutely destroying it!) which was my only priority. I’m sorry. I was dedicating myself to hitting a new goal of 60,000 words or more which I managed. We now return you to your normally programming.

So what’s happened so far?

SALES:- I’ve made 4 sales so far, to Third Flatiron; “The Doomsday Machine Retires” for their Monstrosities anthology, to WolfSinger Publications; “Muse” for their Cat Tails anthology, to Mythic Magazine; “Not According To Design” and most recently “The Girl On Platform Two” to Jouth Anthology.

SUBMISSIONS:- I’ve already submitted 187 stories this year.

REJECTIONS:- I’ve had 169 rejections so far.

ANY OTHER BUSINESS:- Insignia Volume 5 is now on sale. “Not According To Design” will appear in issue #7 of Mythic Magazine, there’s no official date on that yet. I’ll update you as soon as I hear anything.

My latest credit will go up onto ISFDB once it’s released.

My total of new stories written this year so far is now 70. (Thanks, Camp Nano!)

I’m really pleased to have made my most recent sale, I was literally on the verge of burning my entire writing career to the ground and walking away forever. I’ve been pulled back from the brink, but I got incredibly close to that abyss this time.

I Took My Drama Somewhere Else. You May Live To Regret It.

Oh my lovely followers.

Prepare for a story of rudeness. And rage.

To provide full context, I have to start at the beginning.

4 April 2011 –  I submit my 1st story to Kasma Magazine. They look good, they pay money. I’m a noob to getting paid at this point. I assume it was rejected, I’ve deleted emails from that time so I have no actual record but I know it was a no sale.

20 September 2015 –  I submit my 2nd story to Kasma Magazine.

16 December 2015 – I receive an email telling me my story arrived.

31 October 2016 – I shitlist Kasma Magazine for the first time. Over the last few months I had sent them my story a total of 5 times. Eventually I got an email telling me they’d never received it, despite telling me they had. THIS IS YOUR FIRST ALARM.

2 YEARS PASS.

15 February 2018 – I submit another story to Kasma Magazine.

6 July 2018 – I query the story via twitter. THIS IS YOUR SECOND ALARM.

2 August 2018 – I email a query to Kasma. At this point I have been nothing if patient & professional.

22 August 2018 – I tweet the following:-

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2nd Sept 2018 – Kasma send me the following tweet:-

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How rude, right? Not very professional at all. I decide to maintain the high ground, and send this tweet:-

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I then think, this is the end of the matter. I’ve been professional, broken off contact. Later I get this back:-

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That’s my response at the end.

So I was asked to take my drama elsewhere. Oh look, I did.

These are tweets from an SF site who’ve been operating for over 10 years. Over those ten years I assume they’ve had submissions from all kinds of idiots, dickheads, cunts, wankers, twats, tossers and shitheads.

And then I submitted to them. And this is how they treated me.

Now. I could have gotten angry. Could have sworn at them. I’ve checked the submission and query emails I sent them. All very professional too. I’ll happily upload those too, to demonstrate how I’ve been nothing but patient & professional with Kasma Magazine.

I am a veteran. I served through 2 wars. I wasn’t even treated this badly during hostilities! I mean, there was that time where I was made to do shredding for 14 hrs of a 15 hr shift without any breaks but that was nothing.

If you think I’ve been treated badly, I ask only this of you.

Boycott Kasma Magazine, advise everyone you know not to read it either. Don’t visit their site, don’t buy their books.

Please don’t send them hate mail, or hate tweets. I am NOT about hate. Hate is not my thing.

I do not hate Kasma Magazine. If anything, I’m disappointed at them.

If you wish to show your support, just don’t use the Kasma Magazine site.

I’ve been called a nuisance. Fine, I’ll to accept that role. This post is how much a nuisance I can be.

I’ll be honest. I haven’t even got out of first gear yet.

I was asked to take my drama elsewhere. I’ve done that.