Jen was right. A while back she posted about how sad House of Sand and Fog was. I watched it anyway. Damn, I was traumatized and I still am. I blubbered like a heartbroken child, tears soaking my face. And I like to think of myself as someone who ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:21 AM
All right, I don't bitch about my day job much. This isn't really bitching about it either, actually. It's more... bitching about people's ability to bitch other people out over the Internet. Basically, two months ago I wrote an article that really ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:06 AM
My literary reading has taken a bit of a hiatus, as I'm currently reading Scar Tissue by Anthony Kiedis. Hebdomeros beat me to the punch in reading it and gave it a good review, and so far I wholeheartedly agree. I have to give Kiedis credit for ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:57 AM
So here's a writerly question. For those of you who have gotten published, do you ever feel like some of your friends actually don't want to read what you've written? Don't get me wrong, I have several friends who are VERY supportive and good about ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:32 AM
Check out this story from The New York Times. The upshot is, literary novelists "finally" address 9/11.I find that weird ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:48 AM
Two rejections came in while I was away. A slightly late, impersonal rejection from Tin House and a personalized rejection from Night Train. The latter gave me some nice suggestions for the story in question and invited me to submit another piece in ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:17 AM
I have to admit, I fell in love with New Orleans from the first. Despite the fact that it takes a bit of adjustment to get used to the pace of the place. It's intense... just in terms of so much to see, so much sensory stimulation. But I loved it... ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:33 AM
Well, I left work today with quite a feeling of well-being, seeing how I got all my work done so that I could safely go on vacation to New Orleans tomorrow (Thursday). I'm not much of a traveler, and I don't think I realized that there would be a ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:59 AM
All right, I found the voting site for the StorySouth Million Writers Award -- here's where you read the stories and vote. (In case you forgot, one of my stories was nominated, but didn't make Notable Stories, nor the Top 10, obviously.) Sooo... ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:24 AM
Jen's lit mag is up for the spring... and it looks great! It's good to know that spring is here, even though we've had quite the blast of winter today here in the DC area... (although for the most part it was a no show). Check it out if you get a ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:39 AM
All right, I haven't been able to get much done lately but I am about to go get my new iBook (knock on wood). I'm already having a bit of buyers remorse and I haven't even bought it yet. It's just so much money to lay down and I don't even have the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:19 PM
Yeah... what a week. Why am I a loser? I didn't make the Notable Stories in the storySouth Million Writers competition. Just kidding -- I know it was good to be nominated. Why else am I a loser? I missed my long-awaited reunion dinner with Jen on ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:53 PM
Well, seeing how I have a few short stories that are late in responses, it brought to mind one of the themes of the last year or so -- where lit mags will say that they are on hiatus or have long response times (recall my post about McSweeney's with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:58 PM
I'm referring to my subscription to Poets & Writers. I guess I will renew, since it does provide updates to markets, but sometimes I get so annoyed... This month's big feature was "A Room With a View," a look at writers' ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:23 PM
I checked out Black Clock's site and I have to say, it looks cool, and I'm certainly interested in getting my hands on a copy, though I've never run across it on any shopping excursions. I believe Hebdomeros has posted favorably about it in the past....
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:29 PM
If anybody remembers the old movie Suburbia, a punk rock anthem in film form, the kids all called themselves "TR" -- The Rejected. Anyway, the 2005 Novel and Short Story Writers Market had a neat feature about rejection, by Will Allison. He talks ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:42 AM
... but close! Well, not close at all, but statistically speaking... It turns out that that storySouth Million Writers Award won't announce finalists until Feb. 22. There have been 1,200 nominations, so they're still reading through them, I guess. 1,...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:34 AM
All right, so even this is a writing-related blog, it sure doesn't hurt to talk music once in a while. Over the weekend, during my consumer spending frenzy, I picked up "eMOTIVe" by A Perfect Circle. It's an album that consists mostly of covers, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:44 AM
And so, it was a rainy, foggy Valentines Day night, much like this one, about 7 years ago, when I struggled on a 2 hour rush-hour commute (should have been forty minutes, but ended up being that long because of the traffic and the inclement weather),...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:28 AM
I have to say I passed a lovely afternoon sitting down to read Barrelhouse and drinking some creamy Earl Grey tea. I highly recommend Barrelhouse's debut issue. I thought it was solid and entertaining just about all the way through (with the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:15 AM
For any of you who wanted to try your hand at submitting to Night Train, the magazine's off hiatus and is now accepting submissions again as of this month, according to its Web site. I also recently ordered the print edition of Barrelhouse, and it ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:11 PM
Okay, after my egocentric couple of days I'm getting back to normal. I'm sure once Feb. 15 comes around and I don't get into the finalists for that award, it will all be business as usual, hee hee. It was nice to be nominated though. So today I went ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:32 AM
I have a bad habit -- occasionally I Google myself. It sounds so self-centered, but since I have fairly high exposure writing for my day job, I sometimes get a little worried that I'm being savaged on the Internet for some of my commentary. It still ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:12 PM
Okay, I feel like I've been run over with a steamroller this week, but last night I did get what seemed like a heartening rejection from StoryQuarterly. See excerpt below: This fine, very strong story, [BLANK], received serious consideration here ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:52 PM
Nope, this isn't about me stalking out some poor hapless guy who is the object of my affections. Rather, "the crush" refers to the feeling like my head's been in a vice all week. Ha... it's been a tough, overly busy week at work. Not to complain ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:57 AM
Okay, here's the next ridiculous step in my procrastination last night. After the Super Bowl, I heard that commercial for Nike Pro Apparel blaring on my TV -- I had heard it a week or so ago, and it freaked me out. Because I realized that this song ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:47 AM
Yep, I said earlier that I need to be doing writing -- for work. Yes, for work. So far, I've managed to do all kinds of shit that has nothing to do with the part of my work that is really looming. Okay, I do have to give myself credit for working ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:17 PM
Ever have a weekend where everything seems to go wrong? I guess it all started going wrong on Friday night, when I certainly didn't get much sleep. I woke up at 3am, and then at 5am there was a fire alarm in my apartment building and I got mauled by ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:07 PM
Okay, so I had a mini nervous breakdown at work today, when I found out the bands that are playing the Coachella Festival. Nine Inch Nails, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, Gang of Four... All right, so it's a lot of bands from my generation, but I just ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:18 AM
I got a catalog in the mail from Daedalus Books, and they have major discount books -- everything seemed to be priced between $4 and $7 in the catalog. Not everything is great in the catalog, but there were a few things that were worth the price. So ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:22 AM
Just in case anyone was wondering, I haven't given up on House of Leaves. I have just gotten a little stalled out in the appendices at the end. So I'm not quite done yet (though maybe for all intents and purposes, I am). I will post a more lengthy ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:09 AM
Has anyone ever read the literary magazine Five Points? It seems to have a whole lot of critical acclaim but I just ran across it... I had never heard of it before or even seen it, even though it seems to be a magazine that sometimes offers up ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:42 AM
Ah, the disappointment. This month's Wired had an article that really enticed me with its headline: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future. For anyone who needs a refresher course, the right brain is the creative side of our processes. The ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:54 AM
For those of you who keep count, I just received my second form rejection in a matter of two days today. What's perhaps worse, is this story is what I consider my crown jewel of my story portfolio. I've been aiming high with this one -- obviously ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:09 AM
All right, so tonight I was too tired and braindead so I didn't have anything proper for Rabbit Hole Day that Maktaaq let us know about. So, I figured there is a veritable cornucopia of (weird!) songs featuring Alices. (And no, I don't tolerate the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:13 AM
I returned to work today and felt like a pile of rubble had fallen on my head. Well just in the fact that some stuff had gone on without my knowledge (seeing how I was in my sickbed Monday and Tuesday, other than brief bouts on this blog). Nothing ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:47 AM
... is a strong partner. I watched The Daily Show yesterday (don't ask me what day it was from, it was TiVoed) and Jon Stewart interviewed John Grisham. I found it interesting that he said his wife is an important influence over his work. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:08 PM
All right, so I'm not feeling well today so I'm not at work nor am I even working at home. I'm not sure what it is, kind of a big case of "ick" followed by the feeling that my brain's not working properly. I just woke up, what a long winter's nap ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:58 PM
So I was just pretending it was really bad outside -- so what! Ha. After eating a lot of mediocre food and watching rather mediocre movies (Stepford Wives, Resident Evil 2) this weekend, I finally ventured out today and the streets are very clear. I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:59 PM
I kind of like when the forecast is for a snow storm, even on the weekend. (During the week, the office rarely closes, I'd be more likely to just work at home.) But on the weekend, it's pretty much, well, I'm staying in and I'm totally justified to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:57 PM
...in the House of Leaves. I was just commenting about some of my first impressions (I'm about 70 pages in), and decided to just make a post about it. This book, wow. Somehow it manages to make you suspend your disbelief and suck you right into it, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:59 AM
I just finished Chuck Palahniuk's (Lord, will I ever remember how to spell that man's name right off the top of my head??) Diary (a novel, in case you were wondering). It made a good buffer in between two longer pieces, Dhalgren and next on my ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:11 AM
Now this one's worthy of a blog posting. After all my bitching about McSweeney's non-responding ways, I finally got that long-awaited rejection today. And... you may ask, how long did the response take? Uh, 20 months! Yes, indeed, this story was ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:23 AM
Okay, I have not received my mythical Amazon.com gift certificate yet and I've got a bunch of stuff sitting in my cart. I thought it was interesting, though, that there are only four copies of Gargoyle No. 48 left at Amazon, with more on the way. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:33 AM
Okay, so I'm about to break my own record for number of insane blog postings in one day. What the hell? Maybe it's that there were a ton of other more constructive things I should have been doing today -- it's a bad habit. Anyway, it's gonna be ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:29 AM
Does anybody know if there's a way, in Word, to create two columns throughout an entire document and be able to write in both the columns consecutively? The columns function doesn't seem to be allowing me to do this, which seems stupid to me. Any ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:05 PM
Okay, so upon awakening, I realized the snow is gone now. Easy come, easy go. Rewind to Saturday night, and I went to see the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center. A friend of mine landed free tickets through her employer, and they were ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:31 PM
It's obscenely late on Sunday night (er, Monday morning) but I have Monday off SOooo... I watched "Requiem for a Dream" and then had to follow it up with "The Matrix" to cheer me up a little. Damn, "Requiem for a Dream" -- I just have to say, damn! ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:40 AM
Update: Oyster Boy Review is closed to submissions for the entirety of 2005, due to a backlog of submissions. Previously, when I checked, they had said they were closed to submissions till this month. Take that one off the list of places to submit ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:49 PM
Okay, then, Dhalgren, by Samuel Delany -- what can I say? I'm not sure what to say. It was definitely one of the most unique books I have ever read. Ever. I see now what Hebdomeros meant when he was talking about the difficulty in categorizing ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:18 PM
I finished Dhalgren last night, and while I have a ton to say about it, I think I'm going to hold off for a bit. Just because -- all I have to say is WOW and I haven't quite collected my thoughts yet. At any rate, I also had a question. What does ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:16 AM
Yep, two steps forward, one step back... Since I seem to write a lot about relationships (when I'm not writing horror, hahaha), I have tried a gazillion times (ok, exaggeration) to get into Conversely, an online magazine that supposedly pays $100 ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:27 AM
I was the happy recipient of a windfall today -- a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate is on its way to me in the near future. Now, that's really going to brighten my January, considering this month is generally a time when you batten down your hatches,...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:11 AM
So, I've already shared that I write a lot for work. A lot. Whew! But the funny thing is, and I've always had this problem, I just don't speak as well as I write. I guess that's why the whole Information Age has treated me well. Because for me, an ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:39 AM
I've been wondering if maybe my work's not ironic enough for today's literary marketplace. I see short stories out there that blow me away -- they're ironic, cynical, and so funny. It's the brand of fiction that I see a lot in Gargoyle, and what I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:48 AM
Hahaha, I just wanted to make it clear that yes, I'm still reading. Ha. I am still working on Dhalgren, which some of you know, is 700 or 800 pages, and with the holidays, I didn't always have time to read. (And getting back into the swing of things ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:43 AM
Since I blogged about going to see White Noise, I guess I should say how it was. I'll start with this: EVP (electronic voice phenomenon, or recording the voices of ghosts) does scare me. I have a bit of skepticism about paranormal stuff, but I do ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:37 PM
I just sent a gentle email nudge to the editors of one magazine where I submitted, and their response is a bit overdue. Maybe it's a bit too early for me to do so; I can understand what with the holidays, maybe they're running behind, but then again,...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:12 PM
Anybody out there ever have what feels like a really good week, and then suddenly, at the end, feel like a bunch of people kind of shit on you? (Figuratively speaking, of course.) Talk about raining on the parade. I don't know, I just suddenly lost ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:56 PM
Spammers, that is. I do believe I have received my first piece of non-solicited literary spam. (I think?) How incredibly, incredibly bizarre. I guess this means that one of the places that I submit to has released some email addresses? Perhaps ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:02 AM
It's been a couple months since my last point where a whole bunch of responses were expected imminently from magazines, and now I'm at that frustrating point again, where a few are due, a few overdue, a few are coming up in about a month. Strange ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:05 AM
My cousin and I are trying to plan a trip to New Orleans for late February or early March. I've never been there (although I've always known I should go there, and I can hardly think of a better place to spark some creative inspiration (and to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:26 AM
I watched the movie Sylvia tonight and I'm not sure quite what to think of it so I'm going to blather here for a while. It was definitely interesting from the writer's point of view, although I suppose it's nice to theorize that we most of us don't ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:08 AM
In regard to paying markets, Hebdomeros had suggested Word Wrights, and I couldn't find it easily through a Google search yesterday. It seems there are several entities called Word Wrights, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:22 PM
Hello everyone. I can't even believe how incredibly low key my New Years Day was. After a lovely New Years Eve party Friday night, I slept late on Saturday, went to brunch with my roommate, and ended up sitting on the couch for most of the day. It's ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:37 PM
It's a good time to think about New Years resolutions, even though I rarely make them and indeed, in some ways they sound like good ways to disappoint oneself and beat oneself up when they fail, but whatever. That's why I'm not coming up with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:33 AM
The week between Christmas and New Years is so weird. You have this vague feeling the holidays are still going on; even though I was at work, we were operating with a bit of a skeleton crew although my "fan" email was pouring in. (Readers can write ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:01 AM
Another bit of Christmas booty was a hardback edition of Dracula, illustrated by Edward Gorey. Cool! I never met an Edward Gorey illustration I didn't like. The edition also has some good aside information, including the short story, Dracula's ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 09:22 PM
Amongst my most interesting presents this year was one from my cousin, The Little Book of Venom, which is a book of historical insults from historical figures. (I'm not exactly sure what she's trying to say, hahaha.) Interestingly, while the book ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:17 AM
I know I've said in the past that Novel & Short Story Writer's Market is a great resource but man, I feel like they issue it every year without being very careful about updating their entries. I have definitely run across a few magazines that ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:12 PM
It's the day before Christmas Eve and I've still got last-minute stuff to do. I took today off to do this last-minute stuff, but right now I can hear the sound of cars driving through the rain... great. That'll make my mall excursion even more ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:40 PM
So, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is set to arrive in stores on July 16, 2005. Pre-orders started today. What do you guys think? Will it be as much of a success as it was in the past? I have to admit, I've read all the books and I'm ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:29 AM
You know, you'd think that the holiday season would be a great one for writers, what with all this card writing nonsense (one of the few realms left where snail mail rules), but man. I get more and more tired of doing Christmas cards every year. My ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:12 PM
Carpal tunnel syndrome. Actually, it's not just today that I fear it. Every once in a while the idea will freak me out. Judging by the fact that my entire career -- day job writing, and part-time fiction writing, careers -- rely on me being able to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:53 PM
Well, actually, not so scary. Or maybe it is. Dunno. I have had my one horror story (the one that's currently being marketed) accepted by TheHarrow, and it will be published in the January issue. Yay! The downside (not that it's a downside) is that ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:25 AM
Sorry to have taken a little break here, a friend of mine has been in town after a 3-year absence, due to the downward spiral of substance abuse. (His, not mine. I've already said in the past I've ditched my chemical demons long ago, though maybe not ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:53 AM
I'm getting deeper into Dhalgren, but thought I'd broach the subject of names for characters in short stories (for those of you who write them). How do you choose them? I have to admit, I sometimes use a baby name book -- I have a few of these ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:20 AM
I have finished McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories, and while I think it was good (and sure, worth the $13.95 it cost), it wasn't all that astonishing in the long run. When I read Stephen King's Lisey and the Madman, I got this ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:27 PM
Okay, my mountain trip was canceled due to inclement weather. So, here I am on the computer. So I was wondering, do you guys fold the corners down on your books to save your place? I would never do that on a book that's a loan or from the library, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:21 PM
So it seems no one read The Fig Eater. Or perhaps, everybody's disgusted with me for my admission that I just didn't get the end of that damn book. ;) It is definitely time to crash and burn tonight, I refuse to be up till 1am which is the usual ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:51 AM
Okay, so I'm rehashing something I read quite some time ago. Because I was in my roommate's room bitching about something earlier tonight and I happened to see her copy on her bookshelf, and it jogged my memory over one of my more frustrating reads ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:31 AM
Here's a good link for us writers. Story? What Corporate America Can't Build: A Sentence. I'm sure some of us have encountered this sort of thing in the workforce, and I've even encountered some writers and editors who couldn't write and edit, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:31 AM
I went to see the Pixies last night, and I guess I jinxed it with my last blog post, because they did not play "Into the White," which I had hoped for. Oh well... It was a great show, although I must say there were certain surreal elements, like the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:53 PM
I am going down south to Richmond today, to see some friends and go with them to see the Pixies (as well as see their lovely little girl -- who is 3 and not going to the concert, although they did take her to see Fugazi once, with earplugs). I feel ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:58 PM
So, one of my rejected stories was rejected, in part, because of the presence of a fortune teller in the opening pages. I was told that several other submissions to the magazine featured fortune tellers, and the editor was leery about having ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:25 AM
Hebdomeros had mentioned Oyster Boy Review so I went and checked it out yesterday. I enjoyed it very much right off the bat, having read The Everything-Goes Garage Sale of My Love, by A.C. Koch, and The Power of the Universe is in the Mind, by ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:05 PM
Speaking of online zines, if you get a chance, check out JMWW, Jen's quarterly journal -- the winter issue is live!!! There's some great stuff there! Hope you're all having great weekends, LLB
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:29 AM
I've started in on McSweeney's Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. I'm about 125+ pages in and it's starting to scare me. So, I'm not sure "astonishing" is the right adjective for the title. For the most part, the stories have been good so ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:48 PM
Okay, so back to Vamped, by David Sosnowski. I do really recommend it, for being a fun read and a quick read, too. Sosnowski did such a great job of creating a world where vampires are the majority, unlike the usual fare, where vampires are edge ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:43 AM
I ran across an interesting factoid yesterday while I was surfing for research at work. According to a survey conducted by the Online Publishers Association, in September, persons 18 to 34 years old were more likely to log onto the Internet (46%) ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:30 PM
Okay, I have finished Vamped and my thought for the evening is, get vamped. It's such a fun read, really clever, even for those of you who might not generally be too excited about a vampire novel. (And we all have heard of those supposed editors who ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:23 AM
Computers as novelists? Check out this post on the WritersWrite blog. I like to joke sometimes that I'm a machine, but geez. LLB
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:16 AM
So, it's the last day of November and I didn't make the deadline for NaNoWriMo, capping out at about 32,000 words. Oh well! ;) I want to thank everybody for their support though -- you guys were so helpful, reminding me of things like, even not ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:54 AM
Has anyone read House of Leaves? My boss, who has been a great source of fiction suggestions, told me about the book tonight and got me all amped up about it. (Thank God I work with cool people!) It looked really interesting and really weird, and ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:43 AM
Yesterday I suffered a fit of compulsive shopping. I hit Borders and managed to find a few books I wanted. I bought Vamped, by David Sosnowski (a recommendation from Brian over at Bibliotechno) and Dhalgren by Samuel Delany (a recommendation from ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:02 PM
Well, I haven't quite gotten through McSweeney's No. 12 yet, and I'm still smarting from my recent, er, naivete, when I took a joke literally and started the old gnashing of the teeth. So I delved into Poppy Z. Brite's novel Liquor, which has been ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:20 PM
I'm home! I missed everybody, but I have to admit, it was kind of nice to basically be offline for a few days. Thanksgiving was pretty much uneventful, though before bedtime my mom told me a story that really weirded me out, and made me thankful ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:47 PM
Happy Thanksgiving, to those of you who are Americans. And to those of you who aren't, take some days off work and enjoy life, ha! Or be happy that Friday is approaching. Anyway I probably won't be too involved with computers until Saturday (if I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:09 PM
Having only written a mere 1,000 words for NaNoWriMo over the last 3 or so days, I had the kind of nutty paranoid thought of it being a vast conspiracy to discourage beginning writers who don't have "the write stuff" (a la, The Fiction Bitch.) I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:24 PM
Okay, I haven't engaged in a full-on rant in quite some time. Well, it's time. NOW. About a month ago, I picked up McSweeney's No. 12. (I think it's No. 12. The cover is butt ugly, and hard to read.) It's from 2003, so I really should not have ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:42 AM
Yes, that "BLAMMO!" is the sound of the writing-related brick wall, and slamming into it. I kind of felt like this weekend should have been more inspiring, on the literary level, but instead it was kind of frustrating. Right now I'm thinking it's ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:29 PM
I spent the large portion of my morning sending the body of my work (all short stories as well as short stories that are in final draft form, meaning, basically finished, but might need a few cosmetic changes as opposed to vast overhauls) to my ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:44 PM
I got another rejection today, from a publication that was a bit overdue for a response. However, it was very heartening. The editor said he did like the story, though it wasn't quite right, solicited me to send something else, and also gave me the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:59 PM
Okay, so I am at about 25,000 words for NaNoWriMo, so just about the halfway mark, and I have to say... man, this is hard. On the one hand, I can sort of write in my sleep. At certain points the descriptions, the scenes, and the dialogue have just ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:03 AM
A former colleague of mine saw one of my articles that I wrote for my day job and emailed me today to compliment me on it. He quit working at the organization where I work now to work on his career as a novelist, among other things. Anyway, I told ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:02 AM
Okay, so I'm very dull tonight. It was a rather tiresome Monday, and although I've broken 20,000 words for NaNoWriMo, I think the target for the timeframe is to be at 25,000. So I'm a bit behind. And of course, reading is falling by the wayside at ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:23 AM
Here it is, Sunday night, and I've hardly done any writing-related activities. My roommate was looking through my CDs and there's nothing like rearranging stuff to unearth things you haven't thought about for a while. So I got out an old Dead Can ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:31 AM
So, I got my hands on an old issue of Zoetrope All-Story -- it's from 2003, it's the "Love" issue. And while I have suggested that the Zoetrope Web site was a winner for beginning writers, I have to say, I wasn't all that impressed with the issue of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:37 PM
Thank God it's (almost) Friday. I've taken some time off from reading high-brow literature to reading low-brow -- namely, He's Just Not That Into You. Of course now that us women are onto the ways of men, it seems my "relationship horror" genre ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:08 AM
Well, I haven't gotten much NaNoWriMo done today. I did manage to catch The Grudge tonight -- good flick, but nothing that's going to keep me up tonight. I'm kind of cracking myself up with my novel, which has rapidly gone downhill a bit. NaNoWriMo ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:18 AM
So, for those of you who are writers, where do you keep your rejections you receive? (Or do you save them at all?) I used to keep a giant manila folder that was bulging with form rejections, and I mean bulging. I saved the personalized rejections --...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:18 AM
Okay, it's just another Monday and unfortunately it was difficult enough to write for work today. Hopefully I can complete some NaNoWriMo tonight. I wanted to point you guys to Hebdomeros, as he posed an interesting question in his post, "Doing the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:46 PM
I had checked on StoryQuarterly a few months ago and they were not accepting submissions. I checked out the site and they are now, so I thought I'd let everybody know. It's an all-fiction publication that produces print magazines that are carried ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:08 PM
Today I got a rejection from a magazine I have REALLY wanted to get into. Yes, that's bad news. The good news is, the editor had asked for something else, so I scrambled to send it a few months ago, and the rejection today said that he was sorry, my ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:59 AM
Okay so I finally finished Vernon God Little, by DBC Pierre. Even though it took me a few months to finish, it's not because it wasn't good -- it actually was really good. If only for the fact that Pierre managed to create one of the most amazing ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:12 AM
Well, I may have bragged on Day 1 of NaNoWriMo about my 8 pages, but now I have gotten about two words in in 2 days. (My last paragraph really petered off into complete LAMENESS.) Ah well. I am going to try to tack at least something in there before ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:45 AM
Well, Day 1 of NaNoWriMo was yesterday, and I managed to squeeze out 8 pages (double-spaced). I'm feeling pretty proud of myself right now but then again, it's weird getting used to NOT being economical with words. I packaged up a paper submission ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:14 PM
So, today's the first day of NaNoWriMo. I do intend to start on something tonight. This is looking a little bit harder all the time. Someone I know who is also doing it said it comes out to 188 pages, double-spaced. Hmm. I joked, that's a lot of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:07 AM
Well, it's not quite Halloween. But I do have a party to go to tonight, so it might as well be. I wish it wasn't so blasted HOT though. What kind of Halloween is hot and muggy? So, the fact that I have watched so much horror this week it isn't even ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 09:49 PM
Seeing how we're creative types, I was wondering about any opinions on this integral tool of the trade. I toil on a (sadly) ancient iMac here at home -- I think the first model that ever came out of the gate -- and plan on upgrading to a brand-new ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:40 AM
Well, it makes kind of an incendiary headline, doesn't it? I ran across something interesting today. The two big bookstore chains, Barnes & Noble and Borders, both warned about their upcoming quarterly sales because of a) the hurricane (...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:54 AM
... of defeat. I got the rejection from The New Yorker today. And it was a form rejection too, in the worst possible form. So in retrospect, they're not all that late in responding, though later than I would have imagined. Jen, I hope you have ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:51 PM
I'd like to revisit an old question I posed a while back, that nobody responded to at the time. (Maybe it's a really crappy question that only I think is a good one, ha.) Would Moby Dick have been better if it had been written today -- with word ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:32 AM
I recently got a copy of Grand Street in order to check it out as a market. (Which of course, was part of the original goal of this blog, above and beyond simple bitching and ranting.) I got promptly sidetracked by other demands, like reading <...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:40 PM
Well, October's running out so it's almost time to start NaNoWriMo, that is National Novel Writing Month. I just registered last night, so the challenge is almost on. I saw with interest that on Blogger's dashboard, they're challenging people to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:05 PM
Speaking of contests, I can't say my track record has been great, but I did win one back in like, 1991 or so. It was a contest for new writers thrown by Byline magazine -- I'm not even sure if that magazine is still around. The prize didn't include ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:44 AM
Since I'm still at home sick so regular day-to-day life has come grinding to a halt, I thought I'd just bitch and complain about submissions that are out right now. I had mentioned before that October's sort of "D-Day" in terms of responses to a ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:25 PM
I'm a little under the weather today so again I'm going to defer to others' interesting stuff. Check out Maktaaq's post on her early writing experiences and motivation to be a writer. It's good stuff! Also, if you're looking for some new magazines ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:18 PM
So, I thought an interesting topic of conversation might be, when did you realize you wanted to become a writer? I guess it's arguable that I knew all along, since I used to sit down before I could actually write and just scribble gibberish in "...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:25 AM
Yep, this post is about Agents. I was wondering what people think about them. I've always taken it upon myself to market my own fiction (as we've already discussed, this has been a long and grueling endeavor, dragging on for a little more than a ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:41 AM
Okay, really, really recently, I blogged about how I had missed William Gibson's regular blogging by like, oh, a year or so. (Talk about being behind the times. Or wondering if the whole process of blogging had jumped the shark, given Gibson's rep ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:29 AM
Unfortunately I don't have anything too literary to say today. I am still reading Vernon God Little but it's only happening in fits and starts. It seems like there's been a lot of upheaval this week and I've had a fair amount of work stuff to do. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:21 AM
Okay, I have to defer to the interesting things others are saying. Maktaaq, thanks a bunch for your post about pseudonyms! That was a great read and I'm loving reading the comments you're getting about the nature of choosing a name. It reminded ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:05 AM
Last I heard, "nobody's perfect" was a pretty well accepted adage, but apparently some of us are more perfect than others. Okay, not to malign a literary heroine of my teenage years, but Blog of a Bookslut included this fine tidbit today: Anne Rice ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:59 PM
Well, now that I know the story that I entered into the Glimmer Train contest didn't place (big surprise there), I decided to send it right back out to Tin House. Those of you who have been reading for a while know I have something against ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:52 PM
Glimmer Train's Fiction Open results are in. Here is the list of winners: Glimmer Train Press Inc. Glimmer Train's Fiction Open Top 25 Winners And Finalists 1st-place winner: Gina Ochsner for "A Cloud for a Carpet" 2nd-place winner: Sean ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:54 PM
Check out Free Martha by Laura Taylor Lambros on Barrelhouse, if you get the chance. It's a really fun read that'll make you think of wanderlust. One thing you know about this online mag, is when you visit the site, there's going to be something new,...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:40 PM
So, I started thinking about the whole pseudonym thing tonight. I don't know why. Probably part of my delusional thinking of those loads of fiction publications down the line, since I'm waiting for oh, 5 responses within the month. (Which, in ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:03 AM
I ranted a while back about Poets and Writers magazine. I had sent in their card (yeah, right, you know how occasionally you do respond to "junk mail," no matter how infrequently?) for a "free issue" and they had sent me the bill before they ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:23 AM
Okay, so thinking back to college days is quite a ways back in time, for me, but sometimes I do it anyway. Of course, that means it's a good 14 years since the following anecdote was told to me. One of my major mentors, a professor I had for ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:21 AM
Okay, so it's not my imagination. Maybe everybody does think they can be a writer. Over at WritersWrite.com, they discussed that recent NEA report. You know the one -- most of us are familiar with the report because of what it said about Americans'...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:15 PM
I had heard for a long time that author William Gibson (who wrote Neuromancer, one of my favorite books) was an early adopter of blogging. So when I ran across the URL to his blog yesterday, I was psyched. Unfortunately, I missed him, completely. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:49 PM
It's the moment you've all been waiting for (well, maybe not, but it sounded like a good opener): The Fiction Bitch is back in action! She's posted a short story with scathing comments embedded as of 9/15. Poor guy, but the story does deserve it; ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:20 PM
So, for all that I fear some of the literary world relies on "who you know," or the art of name dropping, I do have a fun anecdote from college days that shows if you're not artful, then dropping the best names in the world won't help you any. I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:20 AM
I met up with a friend of mine tonight for coffee, who I haven't seen in months upon months, who was also an English major in a previous life. We started talking about literature and he was of the opinion that the Internet's easy access to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:01 AM
So, I went out and had a life last night. (Went to see the band Flogging Molly, with The Briggs and The Street Dogs opening up. I guess it's a good way to get out and live a little, even if it was a "school night." There was good music and lots of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:49 AM
Over on Bibliotechno, you can find the short list of this year's nominees for the Man Booker Prize. This isn't something I ever paid too much attention to, but maybe now I should, considering my big summer reading pleasures were previous winners/...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:52 PM
Single spaced, that is! So, having been moonlighting a bit helping edit a friend's literary mag and looking through some submissions, and having more than once gotten manuscripts passed to me by friends and acquaintances, I have more than once seen ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:05 AM
Is anybody planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month in November? I'm trying to come up with some ideas for it. And I would find the link to its web site only right now I'm exceptionally lazy. All you have to write is 50,000 words, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:04 AM
So, I signed up for an emailing list from a magazine I have submitted to. I didn't realize that that would fill me with angst. This publication supposedly has a 2-3 month response time for submissions. I haven't heard back for 2+ months and I'm ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:06 AM
I've been having a weird thought lately. Not about literature, per se, but about the advent of blogging. Most blogs started off more as online journals more than anything else. Though now, some have, of course, branched off into targeted subject ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:20 AM
Over on Bibliotechno, we were discussing editors, and I asked, "Are editors today worth their salt?" Maybe not, or maybe not lots of them. It's a good question considering that the two latest Harry Potter books could be used as barbells in a daily ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:13 PM
Okay, so here's the more general overview of the Summer 2004 issue of Tin House. I liked it a lot -- it was definitely a fulfilling and rewarding read, though some of it seemed a little bit "form over function." But, it was worth the $12.95 I laid ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:46 PM
I've been thinking about happiness and art a lot lately. A few days ago, I was blogging about having written my first short story with a "happy ending." So it was interesting to read about the concept in a touching memoir about Spalding Gray in the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:43 PM
All right, so I am reading the Summer 2004 issue of Tin House. Now, it's suitably enthralling so far, that I suggest it as a market, especially if you're a big fan of form over function. And I plan to do a more review-like sweep once I'm done with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:57 PM
Sorry people, I've got a screwed-up link for Poppy Z. Brite's blog, which I recommended yesterday. I'm sure that if anybody out there is interested, if you do a Google search on Dispatches from Tanganyika it'll come up. Sorry about that, I've tried ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:35 AM
I think I'm a fan of Poppy Z. Brite's LiveJournal. Now, I am a fan of her horror lit, like Lost Souls, so I think I could theoretically qualify as one of the goth geeks that she'd like ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:14 AM
All right, so last week I was rather gleeful about my first-ever happy ending for a short story. (Having explained that generally speaking, if my "relationship horror" lit stories don't end with downright unhappy endings, they generally end with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:47 PM
I know, I know, I harp a little too much about Glimmer Train. But, I saw something interesting when I looked at their site the other day. There was a link with a question, something to the effect of, "Is it even possible to get published by Glimmer ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:19 PM
Jen, of the blog JMB, has posted her literary magazine live, JMWW. If you get a chance, check it out, there's good stuff there -- in particular, I enjoyed "Roadkill Eulogies," by Oana Capota. Thanks for reading, LLB
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:37 PM
Yesterday I found myself in Borders and of course, perused the literary magazine shelf. They never have anything too out of the ordinary but of course it's one perfectly legit place to buy some literary rag. I picked up the Summer Fiction issue of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:58 PM
So, how many of us would be masochistic enough to send our work to a self-proclaimed bitch? Stephen, who blogs at CoolReading, pointed me to this lovely blog, The Fiction Bitch. Yeah, yeah, it made me laugh out loud. She asks for writers to send ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:10 AM
Jen, of JMB, recently pointed out Fiction Warehouse as a good market. Thanks for the heads up! They've definitely got some interesting stuff going. Earlier, a few of us were talking about the veracity of fiction contests, but Fiction Warehouse has ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:40 AM
... to all book lovers, who might consider themselves "geeks." Bibliotechno is up and running, and Brian pointed out a fun pastime in the vein of "Trivial Desires," check out this post. Thanks for reading, LLB
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:11 AM
Sorry things are a bit dull right now, but my literary endeavors are at a standstill at the moment. I'm still working to get through the fall 2004 issue of Glimmer Train, even with the added incentive that I dig my new groovy highlighter pen with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:13 AM
So, every once in a while, the deluge of spam makes me seriously wonder about whether the written word can survive the onslaught. Like, those spam messages that are written so poorly, with so many grammar and typing errors, it would make you weep. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:57 AM
Most of the rejections I've gotten recently have been personal ones that say to send more stories to those markets. I guess I need to follow my own advice and feel heartened by that fact. Of course, I've got a story submitted to The New Yorker. I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:01 PM
Kudos to Blog of a Bookslut -- AGAIN -- for providing this interview with the guys who have launched the new literary magazine Barrelhouse. A lot of the discourse into why these fellows launched the magazine has to do with the state of art today. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:58 PM
Well, I guess I'd better pat myself on the back. I think tonight, I managed to actually give a short story a happy ending. Usually, my fiction falls under a new term I've coined (at least I think I coined it): "relationship horror." All about ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:19 AM
I've been eagerly awaiting the return of Night Train for quite some time, as it stopped accepting submissions a while back and at the time, said it would return by August's end. I just stopped by the site to check on it, and now it won't be ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:56 PM
I've been eagerly awaiting the return of Night Train for quite some time, as it stopped accepting submissions a while back and at the time, said it would return by August's end. I just stopped by the site to check on it, and now it won't be ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:56 PM
So, I previously blogged about my strange writerly affection for office supply stores like Staples. I popped into one yesterday, since it's my vacation and what better time to go to such a store for the hustle and bustle but back-to-school season? ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:24 PM
The August issue of Wired asked a very interesting question. "Would Moby Dick be better if Melville used a word processor?" There were 3 answers from 3 "experts." For example, Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves) responded and mentioned ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:36 PM
The August issue of Wired asked a very interesting question. "Would Moby Dick be better if Melville used a word processor?" There were 3 answers from 3 "experts." For example, Lynne Truss (author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves) responded and mentioned ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:36 PM
I discovered Contrary Magazine about a month ago. I finally got a chance to check it out. It was pretty good, though not as "contrary" as I might have thought. I expected possibly more experimental work, or work that would be hard to place ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:38 PM
I discovered Contrary Magazine about a month ago. I finally got a chance to check it out. It was pretty good, though not as "contrary" as I might have thought. I expected possibly more experimental work, or work that would be hard to place ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:38 PM
As in, I need some salt (or some kind of seasoning) as it looks like I may have to eat my words. I have blogged in the past about Glimmer Train, and wasn't too kind. The first issue that arrived through my new subscription really disappointed me. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:36 AM
As in, I need some salt (or some kind of seasoning) as it looks like I may have to eat my words. I have blogged in the past about Glimmer Train, and wasn't too kind. The first issue that arrived through my new subscription really disappointed me. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:36 AM
Anybody ever feeling like they're creating an environment that's a fire hazard? I'm looking at my reading pile as I type. Some of it, already read, and I am nowhere near figuring out what pile to delegate those magazines to. Several ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:25 AM
Anybody ever feeling like they're creating an environment that's a fire hazard? I'm looking at my reading pile as I type. Some of it, already read, and I am nowhere near figuring out what pile to delegate those magazines to. Several ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:25 AM
I guess I'm on all the literary mailing lists now, because I got a slick booklet/advertisement from The Gettysburg Review. Not only is it angling for a subscription, it's upping the ante by offering the first 100 people to respond a free t-shirt. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:09 PM
I guess I'm on all the literary mailing lists now, because I got a slick booklet/advertisement from The Gettysburg Review. Not only is it angling for a subscription, it's upping the ante by offering the first 100 people to respond a free t-shirt. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:09 PM
I just finished the summer 2004 issue of Kenyon Review. I blogged about it earlier, right when I purchased it, about how its preface contained word that it will have an online submission site available on its homepage in September. Which was cool, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:15 AM
Kudos to Blog of a Bookslut for providing the link to this insightful article from Boston Globe online. It's a great article on the future of the "little" literary magazine. It was nice to read after my previous musings. I might argue that many of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:43 PM
I've been wondering about literature taste. After having expressed a good deal of disappointment over a recent issue of Glimmer Train and then raving about several issues of Gargoyle, I am curious what other trends I might come up with as I continue ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:16 PM
I just read The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides. He's the same author who wrote Middlesex, one of my favorite novels of the summer reading period. And, some people might recognize the name since it was made into a movie by Sofia Coppola. The ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:17 AM
Now, I complained just weeks ago about how dead everything was from the submission angle. I hadn't heard a peep out of any of the markets I had sent to for so long. It was total summer doldrums. Now, I've gotten like, 3 rejections in a matter of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:49 AM
The new issue of Poets and Writers also had an interesting article about writers' rituals. For example, Virginia Woolf wrote standing up. Robert Louis Stevenson got inspiration from dreams. (Which reminded me of comments from Jen -- of JMB -- ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:06 PM
All right, I can't complain too much about Poets & Writers, since they did send me my free copy before they sent a past-due notice. What's more, the current issue seemed a lot more interesting than in the past when I've been exposed to ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:32 PM
I came across an interesting site today. Apparently, the challenge is on -- write a novel -- ANY novel (plot? who needs it!) -- during the month of November. The only rules are it needs to be from scratch and it needs to hit 50,000 words (which is ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:56 AM
I finished another issue of Gargoyle -- that's no. 39/40, which some may know I've been pecking away at for a while now. It may only be published once per year, but it sure does offer a lot of bang for the buck, seeing how it's a thick tome full of ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:19 AM
A couple weeks ago Amazon said it's working hard to discourage anonymous reviews posted on their site. The upshot was, anonymous posting of reviews invites distrust and of course, there have been problems with authors complaining that people with ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:48 PM
Speaking of novellas, I have two of those suckers I haven't marketed very stringently. I think I've sent each one out once. The novella form kind of seems like a literary dead zone. Short story -- sure, market it to lit magazines. Novel -- okay, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 07:46 PM
So, after all the summertime waiting I complained about recently, tonight I got a rejection from a magazine I am truly jonesing to get into. However, it wasn't your run-of-the-mill form rejection, nor the rejection that gives some personal reasons ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:43 AM
After all the bitching I've done about McSweeney's, I've got to share a bit of Pooh fiction. Winnie, that is. This is totally hilarious. All that talk of Oz and now another childhood fictional figure shows up in the day-to-day workplace. Priceless. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:23 AM
All right, for the first time ever -- and that's ever -- I've clicked on a banner ad. Actually, it was one of the ads served up right on the top of my own blog, an ad served up by Google for Contrary magazine, apparently associated with the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:50 AM
Over on the blog Bookslut it's been pointed out that Pamela Anderson has written a novel, called Star. (Well, rather, she has ghost written a novel.) Who knew? Pamela Anderson also writes a column for Jane magazine, which does give the impression ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:51 PM
Summer sucks, in the writing biz. Well, other things do too. I have a whole bunch of writing submitted and it's like it's all in the black hole, really. It occurred to me last night that I am really irate with McSweeney's. They've had one of my ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:08 PM
I looked up The New Yorker's guidelines on the Web, they do accept manuscripts by email. That's heartening. Not that I would represent it as a friendly market for brand-new writers, but at least they've moved past snail mail. Honestly, I don't ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 12:21 AM
Last night, I read the best story -- again, in Gargoyle No. 39/40. It was Auden's Toothbrush, by Lucinda Ebersole. And it was GREAT -- it poked so much fun at the literary establishment, how could I resist? It was about a writer who, after one ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:02 AM
I wish I could say that I have started writing a new short story, or finished that issue of Gargoyle I'm looking at, or something of that nature. But I can't. In fact, I'm going to go to a friend's house and watch Bubba Hotep and eat pizza. I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:39 PM
Today I'd like to suggest people check out the latest issue of The Paumanok Review, if they're looking for some good reading. It's an online-only literary journal, though I might add, it always strikes me as having professional quality (hey, you can ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:44 PM
All right, so what's with all the fiction based on The Wizard of Oz these days? I had heard of the novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, by Gregory Maguire (it's one of those BAM selections I talked about earlier -- prime ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:23 AM
What a great weekend. I went on a mini road trip and was far away from the computer and this blog for a full 24 hours or so! Yeah!! Had a great time with friends and it was good to reboot a bit, catch up, grab some new music, and enjoy the company ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:47 AM
So, how did I spend my Friday night, completely exhausted and in a fog from the work week? Odd, but I finished a story that I started earlier this week. This oddly segues with an earlier post from Jen about inspiration: the whole thing started from ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:19 AM
Okay, so today I am commenting on an older issue of Gargoyle. Who says I'm not a little OCD? It's Gargoyle No. 39/40, which happens to be the 20th anniversary issue, which by my calculations, means it's the 1996 issue. How much has changed in a few ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:14 AM
A friend of mine turned me onto a site called Strange Horizons, a site that specializes in speculative fiction. Really, he pointed it out because the site has one of the most exceedingly specific -- one might even say anal -- sets of guidelines I ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:59 AM
All right, so one question I've wondered about recently -- and encountered other short story writers with the same question -- is, at what point is autobiographical short fiction okay? You know, "all the names have been changed to protect the ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:30 AM
So, now that I'm in a lull, having just finished a boatload of good reading described in the last two posts, I thought I'd comment on something I've seen in the past -- when good writers quit submitting their stories because of a few rejections. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:05 AM
So, having finished the fiction section of Gargoyle, it was basically all so great there's really no point in listing out every story that rocked the house. Almost all of them did. I mean, it might be easier to just list out the stories that didn't ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 06:57 PM
I've got a great magazine to report on, as I hinted at earlier, but this is going to be a two-parter. Just because I haven't gotten through the whole thing yet but it's THAT exciting to share immediately. I got my hands on Gargoyle, No. 47, and so ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:55 AM
So, you might argue that there are many places that could serve as writers' meccas. Say, the corner coffee shop (even Starbucks, with its lone readers reading, or booting up their laptops over a latte). Or, the independent bookstore, with its ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:16 PM
Okay, I've been on here for about a week, and I'm sure one question that might come up would be, why the hell is this woman bent on remaining anonymous? Who cares? Is she just a paraonid looney? (Shut up there in the peanut gallery, haha!) Well, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 09:46 PM
I've added some links to the sidebar of my page, with much blundering around, being the blog novice that I admitted to being in my first post. Looks like I may have to tweak them somewhat. First of all, I added Freak Blog, which is an aggregated ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 01:21 PM
So, where's the Glimmer in Glimmer Train? For the uninitiated, Glimmer Train is one of the magazines that serves as a market most beginning writers covet. It pays, and pays WELL. Plain and simple. And it has a good enough rep, but given the fact ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 03:47 AM
A recent thought that keeps crossing my mind is whether works deemed particularly "literary" -- as opposed to your Grisham or Steele bestsellers -- are doomed to failure at times because of literature's reputation for being, in a word, pompous. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:17 AM
As I mentioned before, the Zoetrope site has a great thing going for new writers. But one of the most exciting discoveries was the work of a writer named Alicia Gifford, whose stories always gave me a jolt and woke me up. She's got a quirky, ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 10:25 PM
Here's my rant for today. Magazines that never, ever respond to submissions. Literary magazines have quite the reputation for putting themselves first and writers last. For example, magazines that demand "no simultaneous submissions." Simultaneous ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 08:29 PM
Upon scavenging the Internet, I've found a promising new literary site. Namely, Barrelhouse, which seems to highlight some high-quality new writers. Sex and Pills: A Love Story was an enjoyable read, as was Ryan Seacrest Is Famous. Check it out. ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:15 PM
Just a short note, tonight, and not a rant at all. Any beginning writer should read Stephen King's On Writing, it's absolutely crucial. Regardless of what you think of King as an author -- and I know people have mixed feelings. I used to read all ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 05:05 AM
So, if one more person says how much they loved The Davinci Code, I'm going to scream! I'm not sure I've ever read a worse book. It might make beginning writers feel better abut themselves, for example, if a book with such stereotyped, hollow ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 11:01 PM
All right, here goes -- and this is a rant this time. For centuries, literature has been at the forefront of political and social changes. So what's going on now? So here it is, the 21st century, and we have the most amazing new medium in AGES -- ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 02:09 AM
As an aspiring fiction writer (and semi obsessive type, occasional insomniac/narcoleptic, and relative blog novice), I thought there could be some use and interest in a blog that could help out other aspiring writers, sharing finds, as well as ...
Posted by LadyLitBlitzin at 04:41 AM