EEEEEEEEEE, or Published and Rejected

So this past Thursday a certain book was released that I happen to have a story in. I’m very proud of this story. This coming June, another book will be printed that has one of my stories in it.

This past Tuesday I got another rejection.

Ah, living the dream!

I’ve been reading the other stories in Wings of Change, and I am blown away. I am thrilled that my story is considered worthy to stand with all these others. Yes, I think the story is worthy of publication, else I wouldn’t have submitted it in the first place. But to stand with other stories that I read and say, “This is good”?

The title of this post says it well: EEEEEEEEEEE! I’ve never been a young teen girl before, but I imagine my excitement is somewhat analogous. Continue reading “EEEEEEEEEE, or Published and Rejected”

Depression Leads to New Worlds

So I’ve been having fun with depression lately. It’s one of those things that a lot of writers seem to struggle with, and I think there’s a reason.

When you have depression, you start recognizing that here is not a good place to be. It doesn’t matter if your perceptions are off or entirely accurate. It doesn’t matter if here is your own skin or your own century. As soon as here isn’t good, you start longing for there.

And that longing seeps out in words and phrases and paragraphs and… stories.

There’s this yearning for something different. And it doesn’t matter if what ink leaks onto the page paints a picture of despair or joy; it reveals that the writer wants to escape here for someplace else. It’s not that depression creates writers; it’s that depression creates this desire to be elsewhere, and that desire must flower in some way. Continue reading “Depression Leads to New Worlds”

My plot and my story are fighting…

My plot and my story aren’t talking, and that’s a problem.

Maybe that sentence seems strange to you. Aren’t plot and story basically the same thing? Nah. Here’s a video that explains:

It’s a brilliant video about one of the best movies of all time. I really suggest you watch it. But in case you didn’t watch it or just need it written out:

Wings of Change

“A Dragon Bigger than My Stories” will appear in Wings of Change. Oh, that’s a story I wrote!

The anthology is YA dragon fiction… in other words, every story features either a young human adult or a young dragon adult… or both.

My story… well, here. Let me post the first few lines:

Every dragon’s an introvert. Why else would they hide in caves? They hate small talk as much as I do.

But that’s why I love my dragon so much.

The anthology is currently available for preorder for ereaders; a print edition will also be available. You can preorder an electronic copy here.

And I think you should. I’m very proud of this story and very excited to be a part of this anthology.

Writing Without Hands

You never want to see the Blue Screen of Death. It doesn’t matter what you use the computer for; the thought of that shade of blue is enough to cause twitching in a lot of people.

So when my laptop gave me that bluescreen… yeah. I wasn’t happy.

See, I save a lot of what I do on the cloud, so I can always “get it back.” I hadn’t done a full backup for a while, so there would be a pain for those files I didn’t put on the cloud, but I could probably recover them with a little effort.

The problem was… without my laptop, I couldn’t write. Continue reading “Writing Without Hands”