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I've applied for a new job, my current one has a low ceiling and I've hit it. I have an interview tomorrow. I was told there was an application form sent to me and it should be filled in and brought to the interview (I know, what the hell right). It came this morning.

In the last 24 hours I have consumed so much information about the company and interviews in general my head hurts a lot. Now the application form is standard stuff but it has an 'Additional Information' section google ...

New month.....

Here's another of those space ship covers I love, this one from 70 years ago this month.

Astounding, August 1940:




Love those colours and the epic scale of the thing.

Seems apt as I've just finished Connie Willis's latest, Blackout, set around the time that that issue was on sale in America.

I fell in love with elves courtesy of Tolkien (of course) with Lord of the Rings. I've been fascinated by them since, so it was kind of natural that the second-leading character in my own books is ... an Elf. Tevis MacLeod.
I gave him a Scottish-sounding name in part because of my own Irish and Scotch-Irish background, but elves are apparently Germanic in origin.
BT (Before Tolkien), I was aware that the Norse classified elves in two groups - the light elves (lios alfar) and dark (dokkalfar). ...

So I wrote a 500 or so word story for The First Line.

Took maybe an hour. Two with the typo - check and some fiddling. Including the software tool for figuring a rough temperature for yon planet, given a sun, an orbit distance, a bond albedo, and a greenhouse effect. I figured I'd get something extreme. Cold extreme. That didn't take much time. So I had all the normally gaseous stuff frozen that needed to be frozen.

Maybe I'm giving away the story premise here. ...

Not to single anyone out specifically and pick on them, so I won't identify them here, (and it's nobody on sffworld) but in general, there is one kind of reply you should never get from an agent.

It looks a little like this:

Dear PERSON:

Thank you for giving me an opportunity to review your query. I am afraid, however, that your material falls outside my current, very limited, range of needs and interests. I specialize in science fiction, fantasy and ...

This has been in the works a while.

With the help of an old friend got this up and working.

http://www.susanjboulton.com/gentlehorror/

Woo-hoo! Today I received a shipment of copies of my book from the UK publisher. The hardcover looks especially nice.

Photo on my blog (http://jonsprunk.blogspot.com/).

So back in April I started circulating nine stories of mine. Two went out as simultaneous submissions to a contest, another to an alumni contest, the others went in various states and lengths to twelve other markets.

Six were sci-fi, one was "real-enough" not to be sci-fi (think your more grounded X files or Lone Gunman episodes, or something like Enemy of State level "real"). Two were horror and one of those was extreme enough I figured nobody would ever love ...

One of the side topics the writing group I participate in (my writing group? Sounds a little... exaggerated) has discussed is free markets vs. pay markets.

At the time, seeking my first sale, I admitted some confusion as to the value of submitting (or selling) to a no-pay market, and to this day, I don't track them on duotrope as they open or are added in the weekly newsletters.

But I've gotten less snobby about it since I first formed the opinion back in say May of ...

Lately I have been thinking of Windmills and Wind power. I get to pass a windmill farm on my way to work in Everret, PA every other week. It is in plain view of the Pennsylvania Turnpike just after the Somerset exit. I am always reminded of the movie "Warriors of the Wind", now called "Nausicaa", where the valley is filled with unique windmills for power.

An interesting idea came to me one day while passing this wind farm. I remembered seeing a street in Pittsburgh, ...

Tags: cars, enviroment, mpg, wind power

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Thoughts

Yes it was.

Edit still on going. Hard work, but I feel I have broken the back of the thing. I know what to cut out, what to re-write and what to add. Just need to get it done now and polish it.

Doing a line edit of HOG for agent, just tidying up dialogue and things like "his eyes ran over...." you get the picture ..

New work has slowed to a trickle, but never mind. it is well outlined and I have sorted out the villain's first victim....
...

It's available as an E-book download to a PC from the Xlibris site: [url]www.xlibris.com/SoldieroftheBrell.html[/url]

I understand it will be available through E-readers such as the IPAD and Amazon's Kindle in 4-6 weeks.

Cheers

FINALLY got to the point where I can sit with a pile of books for the next few weeks.

Had a think: tried to suggest what readers might like over the Summer (or Winter if you are below the Equator!)

Here's what I wrote for the website:


Or: ‘I know what you should be reading this summer.....’!

OK: it’s summer here at Hobbit Towers. (Apologies to our Southern Hemisphere readers!)

One of the questions I get asked a ...

I'm going to let people know about another market and their deadline for a theme issue. More notice this time.

Flash Me Magazine

Theme: Science fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Deadline: August 31, 2010

Another good one for sffworld, huh?

Check out their pages for details and so on, but the skinny is 1,000 words or less. (Hint: If you get two 1,000 word sales at 5c/word rate and a third 3,000 word sale somewhere else at a ...

Anyone else going?

I'll be there with a few other Pyr writers (I hear Pyr will have a booth).

This will be my first "fan oriented" convention.