Olga Godim's Blog, page 27

Question of the Month – July 2016

It is the first Monday of July, time again for the Question of the Month blog hop, hosted by Michael D’Agostino @ A Life Examined. This month, Michael asked us all a question:

What was the first book (or book series) you really fell in love with?

This is such a complex question for me, because at different times in my life I fell in love with different writers, even different genres. But I’ll go with one writer who turned my life: Mercedes Lackey. Her fantasy novel Magic Pawn, one of the first in her Valdemar series, was the first novel of sword and sorcery fantasy I ever read.

You see, I grew up in Soviet Russia. Fantasy as a literary genre didn’t exist there. I always liked stories with adventures and magic, so I devoured what was available: myths, legends, and medieval romances. When we immigrated to Canada, I still didn’t know about the genre of fantasy, but the selection of books in English was much wider.

Once, I passed a bookstore and saw a book in the window display: a young man, dressed in some kind of medieval garb, hugging a white horse. I didn’t go in and buy the book but I remembered the cover and the first name of the author – Mercedes. I didn’t even remember her last name.

The image of the book cover haunted me, so some time later, I went to our local library and explained everything to the librarian. I asked if she could find the book for me. She did.

I was enchanted with the story and I fell in love with the entire genre. I started reading other books by Mercedes Lackey, and then other fantasy authors. Years later, I started writing fantasy as well.

I don’t read Lackey anymore; I found writers in the genre who suit me much better – Sharon Shinn, Patricia Briggs, Terry Pratchett, Wen Spencer, to name a few – but Magic Pawn by Mercedes Lackey will always have a special meaning for me. If I didn’t notice the book in that bookstore, I might never have become a fantasy writer.

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Do you have goals – June report

It is time again for the monthly blog hop Do You Have Goals, hosted by Misha Gericke and Beth Fred. Here is what happened with my writing in June?

Short stories

Didn’t do so well in June as I did in May, but then May was an extraordinary month for my short stories. In June:

Wrote and finished  – 1 story.
Submitted                  – 5 stories
Rejected                     – 2 stories
Accepted                    – 1 story
Published                  – 1 story

Novellas

No progress here. My regency romance novella on Wattpad, Fibs in the Family, keeps collecting readers (2.6K by now) and Likes, but I can’t seem to resume working on the second novella of the series.

Novels

No progress.

Journalism

Articles written – 2
Articles published – 3

Art projects

Created a cover for Lidy Wilks’s Wattpad novella The Soul Traveler. It was a fascinating project. Lidy seemed happy, which made me happy too.

Translation

A couple years ago, I translated a Russian novella Scarlet Sails by Alexander Grin into English. I love the story, it’s very famous in Russia, and I wanted the English-speaking readers to be able to read it. I put it up on Wattpad. A couple weeks ago, I got a comment on my blog page dedicated to that translation. Here it is:

Hello Olga, firstly thank you. I had not actually heard of Alexander Grin until I by chance met a beautiful Russian lady called Alissa. We started chatting and she explained that she was a student of philology. She began to tell me of the Scarlet Sails. I immediately googled a translation and arrived at yours within the first ten seconds of her reading it to me; I had fallen in love with the story and also with her, so thank you for your beautiful translation. If Alissa had not read it to me I would not have fallen in love with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.

It made me smile for the rest of the day.

Goals for June

Keep submitting my short stories. Ultimately, I want all of them published by a magazine once, before I put them up on FictionPress as free reads. Of my latest bunch, 6 have already found their homes: either published or will be published in the next few months. The other 9 are still homeless.
Resume working on the second regency novella. My ultimate goal here is not clear: either to post it on Wattpad, like the first one, or publish on Amazon.
Do something with my facebook page. I want to activate it, start looking at friends, groups, etc.
My ongoing goal – look for a critic group in fantasy genre. Don’t know how yet.

 

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My story published

I’ve got my short sci-fi story, The Gift of Nibelung, published in Perihelion Science Fiction. I love seeing my stories in print.

A few years ago, the magazine also published another of my short stories, and funny enough, both stories feature the same protagonist, Katya. She was born on a space station. She loves art. She always finds unexpected solutions to her problems. You can read her previous story, Nude Bargain, here.

 

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Vocabulary big or small

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. 

Today, I’m going to mull on the words the writers use in their stories. The issue of fiction vocabulary is hotly debated. One side postulates that writers should use simple vocabulary, all their words short and familiar to anyone with elementary school education. 1000 most common words, they say, no more. A couple months ago, Medium published an article about the benefits of such an approach.

The proponents of the opposite faction argue that we, writers, should be educators. We should use words the readers don’t know, long and unusual words, incorporating as wide a vocabulary as possible to try and raise the erudition level of our readers? I’m firmly with this party, both as a reader and as a writer. I don’t think writers should stoop to the level of a preschooler in their writing. Shakespeare was of the same opinion; he even invented new words, when no existing ones satisfied him. Personally, I love encountering words I don’t know. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I savor the experience. I reach for a dictionary. I open a thesaurus. I love word play.

What do you think? Where do you stand in this dispute?

Let’s Eat – Rugelach

This June, Audra Middleton is hosting a blog hop about food: recipes from our favorite books or stories about our favorite dishes. Literature and culinary arts combined – what could be more delicious. Thanks, Audra.

My contribution to the blog hop is a flash story I wrote recently about rugelach, which are traditional Jewish cookies. The story, Hannah’s Rugelach, is 1,000 words long. It is about love, survival, the Holocaust, and the second chances. And of course, rugelach. There is also a photo of rugelach below the story, if you’d like to see them.

Not everyone knows the word ‘rugelach’ or how they look, much less a recipe for them, so below is the recipe. Or rather one of the possible recipes. Try it. I guarantee your friends and family will love them.

Ingredients:

200 grams cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 pound unsalted butter, room temperature

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

Optional ingredients – some people don’t use them for the dough, but I do:

1/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup sour cream

Dough preparation:

Combine the ingredients. I do it by hand, but use food processor or mixer if you have one. Don’t do it for a long time; the dough shouldn’t be creamy. It should be kind-a crumbly. Roll the dough into a ball on a well-floured surface. Cut into 4 parts, wrap each part in plastic, and refrigerate from 1 hour to 2 days.

Filling:

You can use different fillings for the rugelach. I tried various jams, Nutella, chopped walnuts, and raisins, or a combination thereof. Or use different fillings for different batches. If you want a dry filling, use nuts + raisins + sugar + cinnamon, but I prefer jam or marmalade: apricot, plum, whatever you have, as long as it’s not liquid. Sometimes I add nuts to the jam. Experiment.

Baking:

On a well-floured surface, roll one ball of dough into a circle 2-3 mm thick. Spread the filling, so it covers everything, especially the edges of your dough circle. Cut the circle into 12 equal wedges, like a pizza. Roll each wedge, from wide to narrow. Place the cookies, points down, on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Chill for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake 15 to 20 minutes, until golden. Cool before serving.

Notes: while you prepare one batch, the rest of the dough should stay in the fridge, until you’re ready to roll it.

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If you like the gourmet blog hop idea, please visit the next writer on our list, Susan Stec. Also check out the giveaway on Audra’s website.

Good luck and bon appetite!

 

 

Do you have goals – May report

I joined the blog hop Do You Have Goals. I just learned about it, and it seems a great idea to keep score and report once a month. Misha Gericke and Beth Fred are managing this monthly blog hop, and I’d like to say: wonderful undertaking, ladies. So what happened with my writing in May?

Short stories

May seemed to be a short story month for me.

Wrote and finished   – 2 new short stories. One is still unfinished.
Submitted                  – 2 stories
Rejected                     – 1 story
Accepted                     – 3 short stories and 1 flash fiction story

Novellas

No progress here. My regency romance novella on Wattpad, Fibs in the Family, keeps collecting readers (2.2K by now) and Likes, but I can’t seem to resume working on the second novella of the series.

Novels

Only goals here. Both my fantasy novels are still under the copyright with the publisher, with practically no sales. Both contracts should expire next year, and I would like to reedit the novels, make new covers, and self-publish. Haven’t started anything yet.

Journalism

Some of my online friends may already know that I write for a local newspaper. In May, I have written 3 articles. One of them was published, and the other 2 are already with the editor. They will be published next month.

Art projects

Created a badge for the WEP blog hop Gardens, which will happen in August. Denise Covey and Yolanda Renee, my friends who run the WEP website, asked me to, and it was a fascinating project.

Goals for June

Finish one short story still unfinished. It’s about half-done, but no ending yet. Still mulling it over. No ideas for new short stories, and I’m glad. I want to return to the longer form.
Find magazines to submit 3 short stories that are out of circulation at the moment. Keep submitting new and old stories.
Resume working of the second regency novella. My ultimate goal here is not clear: either to post it on Wattpad, like the first one, or publish on Amazon.
Advertise (somehow) my offer to create free book covers for ebooks. I want to do it, I really do, and I think I can create nice covers, but not many people are aware of that.
I have a page on facebook but it is inactive at the moment. I want to activate it, start looking at friends, groups, etc.
My ongoing goal – look for a critic group in fantasy genre. Don’t know how yet.

Good news

In the last few weeks I have several nice acceptance emails from magazines. Two more of my short stories have been accepted for publication.

The Gift of Nubelung, a sci-fi story, will be published in June by Perihelion Science Fiction.

Taxidermist’s Riddle , a fantasy story, will be published in July by The Lorelei Signal.

Also my flash fiction story, Carmela’s Copy, will be published in July by the Flash Fiction Press.

All the magazines are paying market. Even though they don’t pay too much, I’m happy. When the stories are live online, I’ll provide the links here.

Blog platform choices

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. 

Some marketing gurus urge writers to have their own online domain (e. g http://olgagodim.com). They say it is more professional, but I don’t have one. I blog on WordPress.com and I’m happy with the platform. It has all the features I require for my site and blog. Many others blog on Blogger, which I don’t like as much, for various reasons, but both platforms have an advantage of being old (relatively) and free of bugs (almost). Thousands of blogs using both platforms have already forced their developers to clean up the code.

Occasionally, I log on to some writer’s site hosted someplace else, with its own unique programming. Such sites are frequently original or funky, but more often than not, they cause my computer to hiccup or freeze altogether. I try to avoid such sites, even if the writers seem interesting. It’s bad for both them and me; we both lose the connection. To avoid such a conundrum with my own blog, I decided to stick to WordPress.

What do you think? What other platforms, well developed and free of glitches, do you know? Use?

Free book covers

I can create a cover for your ebook. As I’m starting out as a cover designer, I decided to do it for free for a while to gain a portfolio.

All my covers will use existing images from a variety of sources. One image per cover. If you already have an image, I will use it. If not, I have collected several hundred images, mostly by classical artists whose copyrights are expired. You can browse through my collection of images on Pinterest. Most (but not all) of what you see there is available for you as a cover picture. If you like a picture, let me know. If it is not available, I will suggest a similar alternative. I can also search for images on stock photo websites, but you will have to pay the price of purchasing such an image.

My preferred genres:

Regency and historical romance
Historical fiction
Quasi-medieval fantasy
Historical cozy mystery
Paranormal historical

The majority of the images I have fit one of the above categories, so the turnout will be very fast, about one week. I can do other genres as well, but they will require more time for image search.

I will need from you:

A short summary of your book, including the genre
The details of the setting – time period, location (e.g. city, forest, sea), season/weather
Physical descriptions of your protagonists
The texts on the cover – author’s name, book title, series name, tagline, etc.
Your preferred font descriptions (e.g. Italics, Celtic, curly, etc.) or samples. If you insist on a commercial font, you’ll have to pay the price of purchasing the font. Otherwise, I use free fonts.

If you have a cover or two in mind that you like, send me the links or the pictures. I’ll use them as a guideline. If you have a suggestion (e.g. “a half-naked lady with her head cut off” or “a medieval castle and a mouse”), let me know. I will accommodate your wishes if I can.

The standard cover size is 1400 pixels by 2100 pixels, unless you request different dimensions.

I’ll do a maximum of 3 versions.

You can see the cover I made for my novella Fibs in the Family here. Or browse through my flash fiction pages. I made all those covers too.

Sometimes we succeed

It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, time for a post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group

The month of March has been good for me, so instead of venting my insecurities, today I’ll brag a little.

1. Two of my short stories have been accepted for publication. One, Hidden in the Mirror, is already published in InfectiveInk.com. You can read it here.

Another one, Tail to Treasure, will be published in November 2016 by Bloodbond. Both publications are paying markets. They don’t pay much, $10 and $20 respectively, but I feel almost like a jackpot winner.

I have had many of my short stories published but not recently. I had a few years break, when I didn’t write any short stories and concentrated on the longer form. Then I started writing shorts again. In the past year and a half, I’ve written a dozen short stories in various speculative fiction genres: fantasy, sci-fi, magic realism. I’ve been submitting them to magazines, not very aggressively but steadily. Interesting that both stories that have been accepted are themed. They fit the current theme of the publication PRESIZELY. I guess that’s why they were accepted first among the recent bunch. A lesson to learn, surely.

2. My Wattpad stories are doing well too. My Regency romance novella Fibs in the Family topped the 1,000 reads mark, and I had some very flattering comments. And my translation from Russian – the novella Scarlet Sails by Alexander Grin – crossed the 2,000 reads line.

3. In February, I participated in a Valentine blog hop (a theme, again). Every participant wrote something – flash fiction, non-fiction, or poetry – in less than 1000 words. My contribution was a flash fiction Hannah’s Rugelach. You can read it here. We all read each other’s posts and commented – you know how blog hops go. I received many encouraging comments. Then in the beginning of March, the organizers announced the three top stories. My story won the second place.

4. I learned a new skill. I now know how to have a text curve in an arch using Paint.net – the program I prefer to create my own book covers. I tried it on a few of practice covers, and it looks nice. Perhaps I should offer my services as a book cover designer. I can’t paint and I don’t know some complex visual effects yet, but if a writer has an image in mind, I can create a simple cover for her. I could also offer fiction editing – another possible service.

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Sometimes it’s therapeutic to look back at your life and list all your successes, even the tiny ones. We all tend to concentrate on failures (e. g. of my 12 stories only 2 got accepted so far) but successes are even more important. They infuse us with a dose of happiness.

What about you? Any successes lately? Big ones? Tiny ones? Tell me in the comments. Let’s celebrate together, folks.