Thursday, January 9, 2014

2013 aka The Year of You Did Better.

Time for the annual roundup post of doom.

I didn't blog as much this year as last year. Or it should be 'last year as the year before' because wow, it's 2014. I still can't believe it. 2013 was shorter than normal. I'd scientifically prove this, but it's so obvious I can't be bothered.

January - Learned I needed to expand the short story into a novella if I wanted to sell it, and promptly put off actually doing it for about six months.

March - Wrote a slightly pretentious blog post about Amanda Palmer and Veronica Mars. I still think it's so fucking cool they let the fans fund a movie.

April - Entered a contest. Lost. I'm not going to document all the time I entered a contest this past year and lost because that would be too depressing. This particular contest sparked an idea and I expanded it into a script. Now I'm rewriting it as a fantasy novel because it would be so much easier to sell it as a book than as a spec script from an unknown, unproduced writer. It's called 'Rhiven'. Selling it to Baen Books, or having it securely nestled in their slush pile by 2015 is a nice goal, right?

June - Sucked it up and expanded the short story to novella size. I swear I've never checked a word count so many times during one document in my life. I didn't think I'd do it, but I added a few scenes and found a way to keep the tension going and pulled it off. Go me.  

August - I was a quarter finalist in BlueCat's title contest for 'Camp Wishaway', the zombie horror story that mutated into a kid's coming of age/adventure story but with zombies.
Because zombies.

September - Resubmitted novella. Waited. Waited. Waited. 

October - Wrote stuff so secret I can't even remember.

November - SOLD THAT MOFO!

December - Discovered a contest to write an actual canon Dark Crystal prequel novel. With three weeks left before the deadline, I jumped in full steam ahead. I ended up rewriting about half of it with three days to go when I discovered my timeline was flawed, but I managed. I think I ended last year on a positive note. 

January 2014 - Reviewed another short story submission and discovered I made a typo in the motherfuckin' title. It's a new year, but I'm still me. Damn.