Category: fiction

A quarter million

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

wing cover 3Halfway through the year and I’m halfway through my wordcount goal: 250,000 new words written from January first through to June thirtieth (251,055 according to the spreadsheet). This means just another quarter million by December thirty-first to hit that half-million word goal.

I’m writing fast and learning heaps as I go. In general I think my stories are getting better (sometimes it feels like I’ve written a dud, but usually I feel better about the next one).

No novels this year – that’s all short/long stories. Next year will be the year of the novel(s) – aiming for the same word count, but far fewer stories and getting those new novels and sequels written (yes, finally I will get The Deluge: The Hidden Dome part 2 published).

At the moment I’ve got more than forty stories circulating around publishers and that’s getting a bit unweildy, so I’m going to pull that back to about 10 as they filter back and self/indie publish the others as I go.

So far I’ve published 150,000 new words for 2013 (in various guises, under various pen names), and about 30,000 of those have been published in magazines (most of whom have paid actual money), and the rest is self/indie-published. I have several unpublished works (including novels) that need some proofing, correcting and so on. I have a different pattern of time availability coming up in a couple of weeks: I should be able to start getting to those then.

And right now I’m taking Dean Wesley Smith’s online lecture on pen names – I might just be shifting all those nom-de-plume stories over to reside under the Sean Monaghan byline (like those Len Stone stories I’ve been secretly publishing for a while now).

“Kernel” published in Aurealis

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Aurealis cover
My story “Kernel” has just been published in Aurealis, one of the leading Australian science fiction magazines. It’s complemented with a nice illustration by Matt Bissett-Johnson.

The issue, edited by Stephen Higgins, includes a story by Sophie Masson, an article on Kim Wilkins by Kate Forsyth, Carissa’s Weblog by Carissa Thorp as well as numerous reviews. It available now through the Aurealis website. The magazine is a $2.99 download, or $19.99 for a twelve month subscription.

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Story blurb:
Genn’s stuck in a spaceship with more questions than answers. He remembers an accident, but no one on board is giving him a straight answer. And the kernel that’s supposed to be helping him recover seems helpful, but does more deflecting than anything.
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Opening paragraphs:
They had given Genn the kernel right after the operation, when he was still feeling somewhat woozy and disoriented. This was in April, a month and a half before departure. The kernel was the shape and colour of a single corn seed: deep yellow at the broad end, tapering to a white tip. It was the size of grapefruit, occupying, when he held it—as he often did—the whole of the palm of his hand.
‘It will help you through the transition,’ the medical team had told him.
‘Transition to what?’ he’d asked, but they had just smiled and left him in the post-op room with the sounds of the rattling hospital for company. There might have been an accident. He remembered Janice yelling at him on the freeway. Was it a transition to a life without a
family?
‘Transition,’ the kernel said, ‘through the light barrier.’

“Turtles” – a Barris Space story – out now in Encounters Magazine

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Encounters 200x305 My story “Turtles” is out now in the April edition of Encounters magazine. “Turtles” is a story set in my Barris Space universe. Previously published stories include “Barris Debris” (Deep Space Terror), “Eltanin Hoop Anomaly Rescue” (Will it go Faster if I Push This) and the novella The Wreck of the Emerald Sky (The Colored Lens).Derel Larsen – a character in Emerald Sky – appears in this new story too.

I’ll be re-publishing The Wreck of the Emerald Sky as a stand-alone ebook and print book in the near future, and eventually will be gathering together all those Barris Space stories (and a couple of others) into an omnibus edition. In the meantime check out Encounters – there’s a whole bunch of great stories there.

The Flower Garden in The Colored Lens

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clsp2013

My story “The Flower Garden” (under a pen name – Michael Shone) has just come out in the Spring 2012 issue of The Colored Lens. Available now on Kindle for $2.99, along with numerous other stories by some very fine writers.

“The Flower Garden” is a kind of a mix of my literary and sci-fi writings. Here’s the first page as a taster
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Greg Winden saw the living machine thing from the Lockheed’s window as the aircraft made its final approach into Garnet Hill. He’d always enjoyed seeing his father’s house from the plane whenever he flew in from Newark, but it was weird seeing a mechwurm just across the highway. He remembered his father grumbling about being so close to a flight path when planes came over. Garnet Hill was so small that there were only a couple a day, and nowadays the aircraft were so quiet you barely noticed them anyway. Really, his father had little to complain about.
The alien machine changed that. His house and garden were in its path. Both would be crushed under the thing.
Greg stared at it as the plane went by. His earset snapped off some photos.
The thing was like some ancient whale-sized bottom-dwelling sea creature. Bigger than whale-sized. Its black, segmented body would have looked little bigger than a snail, from the altitude, but the passing cars on the highway almost straight below belied its real expanse: they looked like toy cars. Like a kid’s micro-slot car set, with a fascinated frisky cat about to pounce on them. It had to be two hundred yards wide, and more than three times that in length.

How to get honest feedback.

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A close friend had a birthday recently. I gave her a print copy of one of my pen name novels. I didn’t mention that I wrote it. I thought she would either figure it out, or I’d just let her know when she told me later how much she loved it.

Well, she really did not love it. Didn’t even like it. She asked if it was one of those “DIY things”. She didn’ t like one of the main characters. She didn’t finish the book, she didn’t even get very far through it.

Huh. And I thought I’d written something that was compelling and engaging with strong characters. My first readers enjoyed it, but then, they knew it was written by me.

I have to remind myself that taste plays a big part in someone’s reading – despite being someone who reads some thrillers, my friend is probably not part of my target audience. I guess I might also need some training in the art of giving. Maybe next time I’ll just a get her a voucher.

A Visit to the Theatre – new ebook

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vttt 2
I’ve just put up my story “A Visit to the Theatre” as an ebook through Triple V Publishing. The story first came out in the Static Movement anthology Bounty Hunter a couple of years back. The ebook is paired with a flash fiction story “The Neuron Thieves”, which was itself published in The New Flesh.

Here’s the blurb:
Nikki’s got a an urgent telex for an easy bounty. Niemann’s in town. All she’s got to do is find him. The trouble is, Niemann wants to be found.

ebook – $2.99
Kindle
Smashwords

Print – $4.99
Amazon

Imaginary Maid
The fabulous cover illustration is by Ateliersommerland, who also created the illustration used on “Imaginary Maid Forgets She is Late for a Banquet”.

Year end review, with a late rally

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Close to the end of the year, close to completing some goals, distant from others.
 
My word-count goal went well: from 300,000 for the year (completed in August), upped then to 450,000 for the year (completed in November) and upped again to 500,000, and right now sitting at 497,065. Catastrophes aside, it looks like a slam dunk on that one. Yay.
 
Publishing 300,000 words didn’t go so great. It went pretty good – right now it’s around 203,000. Mostly self-published under my Triple V Publishing banner through Smashwords, Kindle, and CreateSpace/Amazon. It was gratifying to have several acceptances by publishers in there – about 26,000 words of that total were published in online and print magaziens such as MicroHorror, The Colored Lens and Takahe.
 
What about the other 97,000 words? Well, I sure wrote them. Part of it was procrastination: sitting on a 60,000 word New Zealand Literary novel instead of sending it out to some publishers (and then self-publishing it if it came back as noes). I’ll remedy that in the new year, with my new goals. Part of it was a pig-headed determination to keep things on the market – that is, numerous stories, novelettes and novellas that get rejected and go out again, rather than self-pubbing. I’ll fix that too: with some of the pieces that have been to the seven or eight main markets: the next time they come back I’ll pull them out of circulation and publish them through Triple V.
 
I felt like I spent much of the year feeling out in the wilderness: I’ve had more than a hundred rejection slips since January. Mostly form rejections, but there have been a few personal notes which has been cheering. The acceptances have helped out too – early in the year my sci-fi novella The Wreck of the Emerald Sky appeared in The Colored Lens. I had a few flash-fiction acceptances through the year, which was nice, but most of the longer works seemed to keep cycling. Then, a late rally. An acceptance for Takahe (a New Zealand literary mag), a third-placing in a regional short story contest, and an acceptance for Aurealis – one of Australia’s leading science fiction magazines. Coming just a couple of weeks before the end of the year, that acceptance has buoyed me no end: I am on the right track, and persistence pays (real money in this case, too).

Next year, I’m aiming at 500,000 words from the git-go. And aiming at publishing 600,000 (whether self- or traditional) – and have a plan in place to make the possible.

See you next year, with more goal updates.

Notes on “a little”

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 1 Comment

sship practice
I seem to be always submitting stories, and then re-submitting them elsewhere. Sometimes when a story gets rejected, the editor includes some feedback. I do find it a fascinating education when the feedback from one editor is contradictory to that from another (such as “This story is too long given the premise”, versus, “I found myself wanting more development and exposition – it feels too compressed”). Things like that help me realise how much taste comes into an editors selection and not to give up on stories I’m sending off.

Recently, though, I got a nice piece of specific feedback: that the story contained numerous uses of “a little” in close proximity. Nice call. It sure does. “He moved back a little”, “the projection looked a little worn”, etc. I went through the story (with Word’s search function) and combed them out – changing some, removing some, and leaving a few, before sending it out again. I got another story back yesterday and took a look at that too. 28 instances of “a little” in 8700 words. Some of them within a line or two. It doesn’t make for good readability. How could I not pick that up in proofing? I think I’m going to refine my process and add in an extra proof-read specifically to look for this kind of thing – not just “a little”, but any words or phrases repeated in close proximity. With yesterday’s story I deleted a bunch of “a little”s, changed some (“a bit”, “partly”), and left some (sometimes it’s just what I meant). After all these years of writing, I’m still learning, sometimes even the simple stuff.

450,000 and counting

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Back in July I hit my word-count goal for the year: 300,000 words written. Five months ahead of my timeline. The writing was made up of two novels, a couple of novellas and a bunch of short stories. Being so busy with tutoring, I hadn’t expected to hit the goal so early. It left me with the question of what to do for the rest of the year. So I re-drew the goal, adding on another 150,000 words, figuring that actually tutoring through the second part of the year is bigger than through the first part so didn’t want to push too hard.

Partway through November I hit that second goal, even with tutoring. Another novel written, another bunch of short stories. Another novella. 450,000 words for the year. So far.

I’ve written every day this year. October 6th was my best writing day – 6781 words. This might well be my highest daily word count ever. At least my highest ever with being sane and able the following day. Back in my younger years I might have tried for something higher, but turned into a gibbering mess the following day. June 18th was my lowest count at 152, though I did mark four assignments that day, as well a work my 8-5 job. I’d always planned for and accounted for tutoring to knock the daily word count down: what was important was to at least get some words written.

So I’m tacking on another 50,000 words to make it an even half million for the year. As I write this, it means another 1300ish words a day. Do-able, though I will have to push. No tutoring, but I am studying – taking Dean Wesley Smith’s Essentials Workshop which runs for six weeks from December 5th and that’s going to keep me busy. In a good way.