And so it begins...

[Kessie]

Yay! You have an avvy now! :-)

[cdeb]

Continuing to chronicle success and failure

I wasn't short listed for the SF competition I entered.

I plod on ;D

By the way the Avatar is one I used to use in another site, needless to say its related to 3D software, the flying car is from a WIP I never finished having wound down my 3D work to prioritize writing. I am hoping sometime in the future to bring them together, even if its only for my authors web page.

BTW is it possible to insert pictures in this forum?

[Kessie]

Yeah, I've done it. You just hit the Reply link to use the big reply field, rather than the Quick reply at the bottom of the posts. One of the buttons is Insert picture, but it has to be hosted somewhere, like Photobucket.

[cdeb]

Ok, following Kessie's help here is a bigger picture of the avatar I am using, from the 3D WIP

[cdeb]

Looking at the 3D model in the last post makes me wonder whether I should keep it going, but then the need has arisen in my day job to produced some 3D illustrations for a review we are writing, so it seems I am keeping my hand in anyway...

On the writing front good and bad (but not unexpected ) news.

To be positive, I got the proofs of my non-fiction article in a writer's magazine, which at least confirms I can write something that people want to read.
The negative: Got a rejection from IGSM for my story.

Neutral: looked at submissions for Clarkesworld on-line SF & F mag.¨
They say yea or nay in 2 days flat...and will accept 1 new story submission per writer per week. So a quick turnaround
Bad news: On editor's blog found the following statistics...
They get 600-800 submissions per month and publish less than 1 % a lucky 5% get a near miss rejection letter...

It reinforces again that to break into the market your 1st published story needs to be exceptional! I was reading "Asimov on Science Fiction " recently (having found it our our basement bookshelves). I was shocked to find that his first published story was "Nightfall" which is one of his best (in my opinion) but it does confirm the theory above.

I'm glad that I felt prompted to continue with my efforts last year, as I suspect it is a long road I'm on

PS Didn't get short listed for James White award either...the only consolation was when I looked at previous winners, I didn't recognize any of the names ;D

[newburydave]

The word I got was that our breakout story has to not only be exceptional but I must also be original. New authors don't get ink (or publishing electrons) with redos of Star Wars, TLoTR, or other Magnum Opii of established writers.

(So I won't ever get to write in Dave Webber's Honorverse )

So keep at it. Persistence is the single trait which is present in all of those who succeed (or so I've been told).

Write on Bro.

SGD
dave

[cdeb]

Quick update

Sent my second written story about our cat to the annual Writers Digest competition under genre short story. Its a borderline mystery/SF but is popular with family and friends who don't like SF, so we will see, but the big news is... ;D

My first written story of the new era (which has undergone some substantial changes since its first outing to a magazine) has now been accepted by The Cross and the Cosmos, and on the current schedule is to be published in October.

I am still pinching myself...but it seems to be real

Of course you don't have to wait till October to read TC2 (as the Cross and the Cosmos is abbreviated) you could hop on over now and enjoy lots of SF and Fantasy stories for free www.crossandcosmos.com . And not a few of your fellow anomalians have contributed there.

So this post marks the transition from unpublished to soon-to-be published which I was thinking was an eon away,

Thanks again to the folks who sit in the Anomalous Sandbox for helping me to raise my game.

As Isaac Asimov famously quoted Browning (I think);
"Grow old along with me"
"The best is yet to be"

This is also a reference to my birthday in 2 days so I will be having a double celebration.

CdeB

[Kessie]

Congrats!! I remember critiquing that story, it was quite intriguing. I'm glad you're getting it published. :-)

[cdeb]

And if you did visit TC2 you would see a cover by somebody who just posted in this thread
But I won't drag on about it

(Actually Kessie, I think it might have been the cat one you critted...but your crits are good regardless

I also participated in a Tweetfiction (134 character story) fest held over the holiday weekend by the BSFA. I entered along with 1200 others! So that will be the last we see of that. They had so many tweets they won't finish judging until June.

[cdeb]

This thread is way overdue for an update. And no news isn't good news...despite the saying ;D

The cat entry to the Readers Digest competition got nowhere and now, faced with a specific Readers Digest SF/ fantasy competition with a deadline extended to the end of the month, I'm going to take the bold step of not entering another story! Reading Orson Scott Card's guide to writing science fiction, he says competitions don't have much value (unless you win them of course!), it's better to keep on plugging away at the magazines, on- and off-line. So the new story will be my first submission to F & SF, which requires a hard paper copy and the complication of sending a SAE for return post from a european country.

The tweet fiction entry got nowhere (but somebody on the committee at least liked it!). So I might post it on my blog.

Ah, that's the other news.

In the hope of my first story coming out soon in The Cross and the Cosmos, I thought I ought to at least have an author blog. As I have promised, website development waits until professional sale (as judged by SFWA).

So here it is www.blog.cjohnarthur.com

Its subject matter will encompass the intersection between science and science fiction and is for a more general audience.

The next entry will appear this weekend and be entitled:
Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Quest for the Green Loch

And since this is a true story involving Obi-Wan, it might be worth a peek...

Meanwhile the Sandbox critted Fantasy for F & SF will be revised following Kessie and Pauline's great comments and my entry for Dana's Different Dragons is shaping up nicely. (This is, of course, before the reality check that is called the Anomalous Sandbox )

The author blog may now get more of my written traffic than this entry. But earthshattering updates will be posted here too!

Chris

:)PS. I am also learning a lot from www.bestsellersociety.com Jeff Gerke and friends' author training website. Recommended . And you can try it out for a limited time for free, I believe. (CORRECTION...the limited time seems to have passed, but maybe in the future...Jeff? Thomas? )

[Kessie]

Chris, at least you're out there working at it, you know? Careers are hard, especially a career as touchy and personal as writing. :-)

[cdeb]

Thx Kessie...

I'm in it for the long haul, and not expecting rapid progress

Blog entry is now up!

[cdeb]

I should probably append this somewhere else too, but here is a good place to start.

My Story " The COBot's last stand." has now appeared in the latest issue (13) of "The Cross and Cosmos" which is available for free download at www.crossandcosmos.com. Of course mine is not the only story, so I would encourage you to look at the whole issue and see the offerings of the more established authors too, as they are further along the journey than me.

So I am now officially a published author of fiction.

The big surprise for me was they choose to use my 3D image illustrating the story as the cover ;D. (3D art is a hobby of mine see the Avatar). That was a bonus I hadn't anticipated at all .

[Kessie]

Oh boy, grats! I hadn't picked up the new issue yet, so I'll grab that! Also, grats on the artwork!

[rjj7]

I'm not in the habit of reading short stories, but I downloaded the issue to give it a whirl. I must say, I thought yours was very well done. Congratulations on getting it published.