Twas a dark and stormy Friday
Posted on | February 10, 2006 | 3 Comments
Strange freakin’ winter. I’ve had to wear a light jacket a couple of times this week, but that’s about it. Today it’s nearly 70° again, and raining. Which isn’t a bad thing, because we’ve been suffering a bit of a drought these past few months. This is a good rain—light and steady. Normally when it rains around here, we get several inches in about 30 seconds, most of which runs off and does no damn good whatsoever. Showers like today are a rarity.
I signed my contract yesterday for my essay in On Writing Horror, edited by Mort Castle for the HWA. My contribution is called For Love or Money and contains six publishing myths that abound in the horror circle. It’s quite thrilling to be part of such a stellar lineup of authors.
I also received my contributor copy of Best of Borderlands 1-5 yesterday. Ditto the final line above!
The recommendation period for the Stokers is winding down—just five days after today. “The Smell of Fear” from Corpse Blossoms is doing quite well and should make the preliminary ballot unless something strange happens during the final deluge. If so, this will be the first time one of my stories has garnered that much attention, which is cool. I have no delusions that it will make the final ballot, but it’s nice that people like the story enough to take the time to recommend that other people read it.
This morning was unproductive in terms of writing. I’m starting to think that Friday mornings I should just surrender and stay in bed. The cumulative effect of little slices of sleep deprivation gangs up on me on Friday and I don’t wake up as quickly as I normally do. I moved a chapter in Missing Persons which means that I have two back-to-back chapters from the same character’s point of view. I feel that something needs to go between them, and I even have a fairly good idea of which characters it will involve and what happens in general, but I couldn’t get anywhere with this section, so I moved on to the next chapter for revision. Here, events must be changed substantially, and I got bogged down staring at one paragraph, trying to figure out how to reword the opening sentence. Not enough neurons firing. I plan to take tonight off, watch some shows I taped during the week that I haven’t had a chance to see yet (CSI, Survivor, Veronica Mars) and tackle things anew tomorrow.
Alas, I also have to do some more work on the taxes this weekend. I’m fairly well organized in terms of all the material I need for my writing enterprise, but I always have to go through bank statements and credit card statements for the twelve-month period to make sure I haven’t missed anything, which is a bit laborious. I’d much rather stare blankly at the screen trying to figure out how to reword a paragraph.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
February 11th, 2006 @ 12:15 am
I’m looking forward to reading your chapter in ON WRITING HORROR. It sounds really interesting.
February 13th, 2006 @ 9:27 am
Thanks — I had to pitch a few different ideas before I found one that rang Mort’s bell. “Yeah! Go&&amn right,” he said in response to my query!
June 26th, 2009 @ 2:33 am
I like to watch Veronica Mars episodes as well Lost. I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.