Update: February 2021
Sorry about the incredibly long gap between blog posts. Juggling my role as a de facto teacher, writing, a couple bouts of illness, and the general craziness of this world provided plenty of distractions. This year, I’ll be opting one blog update every month to help ensure a more regular schedule. Occasionally, you may see a post discussing some of my influences or announcing a new story.
With that announcement out of the way, let’s get on to the actual substance of this post!
When it comes to writing, I’ve spent the last few months primarily focused on poetry, polished up some stories for submission, and expanding my social media presence. There have been some really cool developments, though.
First, my tanka “Republic Awaiting Spring” earned a Daily Deviation over on DeviantArt. This brought in tens of thousands of views and a bunch of new watchers. I’m…absolutely floored by how much attention it has received.
Second, I performed another editing pass on my fantasy western novella Folk of Rock and Water and political fantasy piece “She Shall Be King” before sending them off to a couple promising markets. Here’s hoping I get a bite! Especially on Folk of Rock and Water; the publisher it’s currently under consideration with pays very well. The fact this novella picked up a request during #PitMad gives me hope.
Another pass over “The Death of Liberty?” is in the pipeline, too. The market for a superhero political thriller short story isn’t very big, but everything that has happened recently makes its message even more topical than when I wrote it back in 2019. I’m currently looking into finding a good cover artist and self-publishing through KDP.
Third, I finally sorted out my Wattpad account and created an author page on Facebook! Social media isn’t my forte, but every little bit helps. Porting my publicly available poems and short stories onto Wattpad has been tedious and time-consuming, given the need to create a cover on Canva, so there’s not much there at the moment. Meanwhile, my Facebook page is just getting off the ground. Feel free to give it a like if you haven’t already.
Fourth, I’m revisiting a positively ancient story I wrote back in my high school creative writing class. An assignment to write from the POV of a member of the opposite sex, it was a military sci-fi/space opera tale in the vein of Honor Harrington. However, due to length/time constraints and the nature of the assignment, I opted to brush over the final battle. But not this time. I’m currently ~333 words into a proper space battle scene and should be able to finish it next week if all goes well.
Finally, I have four writing goals for 2021:
1) Have at least one story accepted for publication.
2) Complete an in-depth edit of my novel manuscript The Silver Shrike
3) Gather funds for the anthology I hope to compile
4) Complete pre-writing for my next novel
With another stimulus check on the horizon, I think I’ll be able to accomplish #3 without much issue. Once my precise budget is set, I’ll post a call for speculative short fiction submissions set in Oklahoma and start looking for artists.
Most of my January was spent working on the fourth goal, specifically getting acquainted with writing romance and romantic suspense. Neither genre is something I ever expected to write, but they seem like the best fit for a novel adaptation of “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill” or a prequel. My focus is now turning toward research on modern Comanche culture so I can portray Topsannah in a realistic, respectful manner. Once that’s done, I’ll start outlining.
First, however, I plan on returning to Arlise Dun—my first, and most successful, recurring protagonist—with a short story targeted at sword & sorcery magazine Whetstone. Things are still fuzzy, but my current idea is to show the incident which prompted Arlise to join the Order of Watchers in search of redemption. Hopefully they buy it, which would allow me to check off that first goal.
Once that’s dealt with and things settle down, I hope to finally give The Silver Shrike one last full edit before deciding how to deal with the project.
My reading over the past few months has been focused on either research, such as Morris W. Foster’s Being Comanche: The Social History of an American Indian Community, or romantic suspense comp-titles like Next of King by Jae.
Recreationally, I’ve continued gamemastering our Dungeon World campaign. Things are really heating up, with the party on the verge of confronting a recurring villain important to the backstory of two of the player characters. Can’t wait to see what that will be like!
Back in December, I managed to get a fantastic look at the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. It’s a shame astrophotography equipment is so expensive, but I captured a couple decent images through the eyepiece with a phone camera. You can actually see all four Galilean Moons, though they're pretty faint.
Hopefully everybody reading this is well. Or, at least, as well as you can be during times like this. See y’all in March!
With that announcement out of the way, let’s get on to the actual substance of this post!
When it comes to writing, I’ve spent the last few months primarily focused on poetry, polished up some stories for submission, and expanding my social media presence. There have been some really cool developments, though.
First, my tanka “Republic Awaiting Spring” earned a Daily Deviation over on DeviantArt. This brought in tens of thousands of views and a bunch of new watchers. I’m…absolutely floored by how much attention it has received.
Second, I performed another editing pass on my fantasy western novella Folk of Rock and Water and political fantasy piece “She Shall Be King” before sending them off to a couple promising markets. Here’s hoping I get a bite! Especially on Folk of Rock and Water; the publisher it’s currently under consideration with pays very well. The fact this novella picked up a request during #PitMad gives me hope.
Another pass over “The Death of Liberty?” is in the pipeline, too. The market for a superhero political thriller short story isn’t very big, but everything that has happened recently makes its message even more topical than when I wrote it back in 2019. I’m currently looking into finding a good cover artist and self-publishing through KDP.
Third, I finally sorted out my Wattpad account and created an author page on Facebook! Social media isn’t my forte, but every little bit helps. Porting my publicly available poems and short stories onto Wattpad has been tedious and time-consuming, given the need to create a cover on Canva, so there’s not much there at the moment. Meanwhile, my Facebook page is just getting off the ground. Feel free to give it a like if you haven’t already.
Fourth, I’m revisiting a positively ancient story I wrote back in my high school creative writing class. An assignment to write from the POV of a member of the opposite sex, it was a military sci-fi/space opera tale in the vein of Honor Harrington. However, due to length/time constraints and the nature of the assignment, I opted to brush over the final battle. But not this time. I’m currently ~333 words into a proper space battle scene and should be able to finish it next week if all goes well.
Finally, I have four writing goals for 2021:
1) Have at least one story accepted for publication.
2) Complete an in-depth edit of my novel manuscript The Silver Shrike
3) Gather funds for the anthology I hope to compile
4) Complete pre-writing for my next novel
With another stimulus check on the horizon, I think I’ll be able to accomplish #3 without much issue. Once my precise budget is set, I’ll post a call for speculative short fiction submissions set in Oklahoma and start looking for artists.
Most of my January was spent working on the fourth goal, specifically getting acquainted with writing romance and romantic suspense. Neither genre is something I ever expected to write, but they seem like the best fit for a novel adaptation of “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill” or a prequel. My focus is now turning toward research on modern Comanche culture so I can portray Topsannah in a realistic, respectful manner. Once that’s done, I’ll start outlining.
First, however, I plan on returning to Arlise Dun—my first, and most successful, recurring protagonist—with a short story targeted at sword & sorcery magazine Whetstone. Things are still fuzzy, but my current idea is to show the incident which prompted Arlise to join the Order of Watchers in search of redemption. Hopefully they buy it, which would allow me to check off that first goal.
Once that’s dealt with and things settle down, I hope to finally give The Silver Shrike one last full edit before deciding how to deal with the project.
My reading over the past few months has been focused on either research, such as Morris W. Foster’s Being Comanche: The Social History of an American Indian Community, or romantic suspense comp-titles like Next of King by Jae.
Recreationally, I’ve continued gamemastering our Dungeon World campaign. Things are really heating up, with the party on the verge of confronting a recurring villain important to the backstory of two of the player characters. Can’t wait to see what that will be like!
Back in December, I managed to get a fantastic look at the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. It’s a shame astrophotography equipment is so expensive, but I captured a couple decent images through the eyepiece with a phone camera. You can actually see all four Galilean Moons, though they're pretty faint.
Hopefully everybody reading this is well. Or, at least, as well as you can be during times like this. See y’all in March!
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Writing, Reading, and Living with Austin Worley
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