My pimpage

Posted on January 7, 2009 by Matthew S. Rotundo

Everyone out there in LJ land already knows that the nomination period for the 2009 Hugo Awards is now open.  So this is the part where I humbly proffer "The Frankenstein Diaries," which appeared in issues 8 and 9 of Intergalactic Medicine Show last year, for your consideration.  It’s a novelette.

Members of last year’s or this year’s WorldCon are eligible to nominate.  If you’re a likely Hugo voter and would like a copy of "The Frankenstein Diaries," leave a note with your contact information in comments.

And I simply cannot let this opportunity pass without once again mentioning James Maxey‘s excellent "Silent As Dust," which appeared in issue 7 of IGMS.  It’s already been picked up for a Year’s Best anthology, so I’m not the only one who was blown away by it.  Seriously, folks, if you haven’t read this one, you need to rectify that situation ASAP.

Here endeth the pimpage.

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Progress Report, in which I share what I’ve learned

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Matthew S. Rotundo

When not conducting my year-end evaluation, I spent most of last week reading novel excerpts for the Codex Novel Contest.  It was instructive, actually.  All those opening chapters and synopses got me thinking about the things I could do better with my opening for Petra Released.  So even though I’ve already done a revision on chapters 1-3, I think I’ll do another before I jump into the rest of the rewrite.

This contest has also been instructive in another way:  for the first time, I’ve gotten a sense for what an editor or agent goes through when reading partials.  Everything I’m reading is at least competent.  Most of the material is intriguing in one way or another.  In many cases, there’s nothing exactly wrong with a particular partial, but there’s nothing sufficiently special with it, either.  I’ve heard editors make similar comments in times past; now I’ve come to see the truth of it.

You’ve heard it before, now hear it again:  make your openings sing, folks.

Here endeth the lesson.  You’re welcome.

No updates for Write Club. 

Back to the reading . . .

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Evaluation and Prognostication

Posted on January 2, 2009 by Matthew S. Rotundo

So now it’s 2009, and we all know what that means.  Let’s get to it.

The Year That Was

New Fiction:  112,000 words.  Most of that came from Petra Released; the rest was a short story.

Other Verbiage:  29,000 words.  This consists of blog entries, critiques, and other miscellaneous small projects.

That’s a total of 141,000 new words in 2008–a new personal best!

Rewrites:  99,000 words.  Most of this was the third draft of Petra, largely a clean-up draft, so it’s not as impressive as it might seem.

Submissions:  31, including novel queries.

Rejections:  25, including withdrawn mss.

Sales:  5.  Another new record!

Submission pending as of 12/31/08:  9.

Publications:  Just one–"The Frankenstein Diaries" in issues 8 and 9 of Intergalactic Medicine Show.

Reprints:  I put 3 stories up on AnthologyBuilder:  "Hitting the Skids in Pixeltown," "Alan Smithee Lives in Hell," and "Ascension."

Contests/Awards/Other recognition:  First place in Writers of the Future, Q1 2008.  Still joyful about this one.  Also, became an official Active SFWA member.

Conventions attended:  OSFest, WorldCon, and MileHiCon.

Assessment behind the cut . . .

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