lovecircle
Cheat sheet update: Shimmer and Strange Horizons have both reopened, and Strange Horizons is raising its pay rate to 7 cents per word. However, as a result, SH will be publishing fewer stories each month.

***

I ended up submitting two stories to the Dell Awards this year. I wanted to have a third, but I ran out of editing steam around New Year's, and the secondary world fantasy I started writing in September didn't get finished.  I guess I didn't meet all the writing goals I made way back in the day, but I'm a lot farther along with the novel than I thought I would be (thanks in no small part to some truly excellent critiquers). So, I'm pretty satisfied.  Good luck to everyone else entering the Dells!

(title quote: Pablo Picasso)

academia
Markets cheat sheet update: Shimmer is closed until January 1.  Also, if you were wanting to submit something to Ideomancer, this year's December-January reading period has begun.

***

So, I survived the end of the semester.  Finals did not go completely flawlessly, but compared to other semesters, they were fantastic.  For once, I'm not even that worried about my grades.

As for the next six months of my life, they're going to be awesome.  I've decided.  There is no other option.  I mean, Christmas break means seeing family and friends, and the Alpha-esque writing and critiquing extravaganza that is the runup to the Dell Awards.  It means spending a few days in Seattle, which I can hardly believe is happening.  And then next semester, I'm taking a class on sustainable development (!) with one of my favorite professors ever, I'm finishing up my thesis with my other favorite professor, and I get to be a teaching assistant.  Then, I graduate.

And that's just the stuff I know about right now.  There's one thing I'm hoping for more than almost anything, but a) it might take longer than six months and b) in a lot of ways, it's out of my hands.  We'll see.

a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
My first-ever attempt at NaNoWriMo is not going particularly well. If I'd had this novel percolating in my head for six months or so, and if I had a solid scene-by-scene outline (like I did once I had finally wrung most of the idiocy out of protospace), I could maybe be making better progress. As it is... not so much. I do have a week-long break at Thanksgiving, so it's not inconceivable that I could still make it to 25k (either on this story or something else), but I suspect I may need that time for writing things of a more academic nature.

In happier news, Realms of Fantasy is back! Another brave soul has stepped up to the plate: Damnation Books LLC has bought the magazine, and it looks like they'll start publishing issues again in April. The submission guidelines are exactly the same as they were before, which makes me think maybe they haven't been updated yet, and SFWA's eligibility page still lists RoF as defunct (probably because the news just came out today), so I'll keep an eye on that and make changes to the cheat sheet as necessary.

Two stories that I've been following: Burma held elections for the first time in 20 years, but it looks like they were completely rigged. Also, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian businessman who had everything taken from him and was thrown in jail because Putin saw him as a threat, was convicted recently of "Kafkaesque charges."  Gah.

Also, this post on the Futurismic blog got me thinking. The gist of it is that it would be interesting (to say the least) if citizens had the option of directing part of their tax dollars to the government agency of their choice. As an economist, I like the idea because it creates a market of sorts for public funds, with agencies competing for taxpayers' favor--which would theoretically give them an incentive to become more efficient and transparent, and to communicate the tangible, positive things they're accomplishing to the public.  The flip side of this, of course, is that agencies would also have an incentive to divert resources into advertising.  Not only would much of that advertising take the form of propaganda, but smaller, more obscure agencies could potentially lose out.  It's an interesting thought experiment, anyway.

a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
Quick cheat sheet update: Abyss & Apex is normally open to fiction submissions during November, but not this time around, and Strange Horizons is closing for the months of November and December.

Also, for the very first time in my life, I am going to attempt NaNoWriMo.  Due to time constraints, I'm only shooting for 25k, but that's still more productive than I've ever been in any single month.  (It is also insane. If I had any sense, I'd be doing WriSoMiFu at most.)  Not describing the plot yet, mainly because I only sort of have one.  Good luck to everyone else doing NaNo!

Also, happy Halloween!  I have the best Halloween costume ever courtesy of [livejournal.com profile] jaggedapple, but nowhere to wear it.  Ah, well, there's always next year.  And I missed the campus parties for a good reason, namely getting to see the Stewart/Colbert rally with David, [livejournal.com profile] remarknj, and [livejournal.com profile] tmseay (frustratingly, [livejournal.com profile] ryuutsurugi was undoubtedly less than a hundred yards away, but in such a massive crowd that we couldn't find her).

The title quote is what my fortune cookie said when David and I went to PF Chang's for my birthday.  Which, by the way, was a lot better than I was expecting.  (My birthday, I mean.  The orange chicken was excellent as always.)  I was silly for worrying that it wouldn't be fun.

Back to novel-planning.

a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
It's been an unfortunate couple of days in the world of short speculative fiction. First came the announcement that Realms of Fantasy is shutting down, for real this time. And while Futurismic will still be around, it's not accepting fiction submissions for the indefinite future. I've removed them both from the cheat sheet, though I very much hope that I can at least restore Futurismic to the list at some point.

One very small bright spot is that Realms of Fantasy is making its final issue available for free.

Elsewhere on the web:

The ACLU prepares for futuristic threats to civil liberties (The American Prospect)

A DARPA-funded "hundred-year starship" program (KurzweilAI)

The D.I.Y. Foreign-Aid Revolution (New York Times)

What They Know (The Wall Street Journal's series on online privacy, or the lack thereof. Scary stuff.)

a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
(Not in that order.)

First and most importantly, as I'm sure you've heard, Jon Stewart is having a Rally to Restore Sanity in Washington, D.C. on October 30.  My boyfriend and I are so totally going.  If anyone in the area is up for an Alpha reunion, let me know.

Second, the markets cheat sheet.  Lightspeed's guidelines URL was out of date, so I fixed that, and the Futurismic response time seems to have changed (or else I misread the page the first time around), which pleases me.  Also, I've added Apex and Cicada to the list.  (Why did no one tell me that Cicada pays up to 25 cents a word?  Too bad they're currently closed.) 

ETA: there's another page with Cicada guidelines (see the comments on the LJ  version of this entry), and it looks like they might be open to young writers.

Other notes:

Cat Valente, editor of Apex, is calling for submissions from Muslim writers and writers of Arabic descent for Apex's November issue.  ("If you think you might 'count,' then you do.")

Also, this is old news, but the deadline is coming up in a couple of months, so I'll post about it anyway: Realms of Fantasy is doing an all-women issue in August 2011 (guidelines here and here).  The deadline for submissions is November 15.  I wanted to clean up the German steampunk story and submit it to this, but I'm not sure that's happening.

Also, the excellent Strange Horizons is having a fund drive.

Finally, random linkspam!

The best "leaving LiveJournal" post I've seen yet. (from the guy who does the webcomic Pictures for Sad Children)

The U.S might impose trade sanctions on China. (BBC)

READ THIS.  Well, first read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T. S. Eliot, aka one of my favorite poems ever.  But then read that.  (by [livejournal.com profile] copperbadge, via [livejournal.com profile] cleolinda)

lovecircle
YES.  I mean, it's a first draft, and I know I have lots of revision to do, but I typed "End" after two and a half years, and that's what counts, right?

Thirteen months ago, I wanted to have the first draft plus some revision done by my 21st birthday.  It looks like I might just meet that goal after all.

To give you an idea of how insane the past two months have been compared to my normal speed of writing, I offer the following graph.  (Yes, I culled data from old LJ posts and made a graph of my progress in Excel.  I'm cool like that.)




lonely
A couple of days late in updating the cheat sheet with this, but Strange Horizons reopened.
lonely
In the interest of being the first kind of person, I have goals for the semester.  Let's be generous and say I have until New Year's.  Or maybe until five minutes before the Dell Awards deadline.  That'll work.

1. A finished draft of Apertures (otherwise known as the protospace novel), suitable for critique.  Mini-deadline: I want to have reached the end of the manuscript by October 17 (otherwise known as my 21st birthday, the end of fall break, and/or the point in the semester after which I cannot reasonably expect to do any intensive novel-writing).  After that, I already know there are lots of things I want to fix, so I'll aim to have those done by January, if not well before.  A while back, I wanted to have the revisions done by October 17 as well, but at this point, I think it'd be unwise to push myself that hard.

2. A finished and polished version of the secondary-world fantasy thing I'm writing right now, suitable for entry into the Dell Awards.  I think I can at least have a first draft of this one by October, thanks to [livejournal.com profile] elanid's iron fist if nothing else.

Bonus: Another short story, giving me a grand total of three for the Dells.  I'm not sure about this one because I only have the idea and an incredibly vague outline, plus it will require research.  I'll assess where I am in mid-October and decide whether this one's actually feasible.

If I don't finish at least 1 and 2... well, I'm aware this is really ambitious, and I'm not brave enough to be like [personal profile] fairfeather and pledge to do something distasteful, but I'll at least post that I didn't finish and LiveJournal (and Dreamwidth) will know of my shame.  Also, I'm posting this publicly.

Oh, and also I'm taking 16 credit-hours this semester, so letting school slide might be bad.

And now, it would be nice if I could sleep.

ETA, 9/9/10:  Okay, looking back at this, I am insane.  Even as much as I've been writing in the past month or so, I'm only managing about 5k every two weeks, which means I can probably only do about 12k between now and my birthday.  I'm really bad at estimating needed wordcounts, but I think I need at least 20k to reach the end.  So... Thanksgiving for my mini-deadline?  I don't know.

(title quote: Robert Byrne)

nagi
To summarize very briefly (because I have about three chapters of Amartya Sen left to read), the new opt-in feature that crossposts comments to LJ and Twitter could potentially reveal personal information, and the "pingback" feature (which is turned on by default) sends the contents of f-locked posts to LJ users you link to in those posts, even if they're not on your f-list.

More here and here if you're interested.

Again, I have Dreamwidth invites.  :-/

lonely
Two quick things:

The Help Pakistan LJ community is holding an auction to benefit survivors of the recent floods in Pakistan.  Bidding for the first round closes on August 28th at 11:59 pm EST.

Also, I have no fewer than eight Dreamwidth invite codes at my disposal, so comment here if you'd like one.


a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
Strange Horizons will be closed for two weeks, starting tomorrow and ending September 5.  According to the SH fiction blog, this is because one of the fiction editors is getting married, so congratulations to her!
lovecircle
My latest post on the Alpha blog is up!  This one's on exposition.  Alphans who are similarly ancient may recall that I gave my Beta presentation on this very same topic in 2007.  So, go read it, make all the good points I totally forgot about in the comments, and while you're there, check out the other posts as well.  Good stuff.

In other news, I just spent a fantastic weekend in York with the lovely [livejournal.com profile] remarknj and two of her friends from school.  There were boats, castles, cathedral towers, dashing absinthe salesmen, street performers, many bookshops, and of course, Yorkshire pudding.  It was awesome.

And now, back to the grind.

academia
If you're interested, I've been blogging a bit about the academic aspects of my time in London over at Elles Disent: first a post on attending a talk by Amartya Sen (aka my favorite economist ever), and just now, a post in defense of capitalism.

In other news, this is my life and I'm not entirely sure what to do about it.

(title quote: Robert Louis Stevenson.)


a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
1. You are awesome.

2. Wordpress generates about ninety zillion RSS feeds for different parts of the site, so make sure you're subscribed to the right one. If you subscribed to, say, the RSS feed for the home page's nonexistent comments section, it won't work.

I think I've disabled all the RSS feeds that don't have any content in them, so from here on out, visitors should have much less trouble finding the one they actually want. I apologize for any confusion that may have occurred.

***

If you haven't subscribed to the Alpha blog, you totally should!

If you have no idea what RSS is, it's a really easy way to keep track of your favorite sites.  You should check it out.

***

I'm going to make a real post at some point, I swear.

a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
My sister: Yeah, the Cypriate soccer team beat Italy at soccer last year.

Me: Awesome!

Her: It was just a scrimmage, but still.  Italy was pissed.  It was like you beating Alabama at football.

Me: Ahaha--

Her: No, not you-Vanderbilt.  You personally.
lonely
In the novel I am currently writing, a character is arrested by the authorities and held in prison.  His files are classified.  He can't even have visitors, let alone a lawyer or a trial, and the authorities can hold him as long as they want.  I'm not even going to get into what they do to him.  At the time of his arrest, he is nineteen years old.

As I was planning the outline, I wondered whether this might be unrealistic.

Everyone, meet Kyaw Moe Naing of Myanmar.

This is sick.

(More on human rights in Myanmar from Amnesty International.)

lovecircle
Today's updates to the speculative fiction markets cheat sheet: Strange Horizons and Ideomancer are both open. Electric Velocipede should be open as of yesterday, but you may want to hold off on submitting until the editor updates the guidelines page to reflect the fact.
a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
In the blogging service sweepstakes, Dreamwidth eats LiveJournal for breakfast. No ads, the "subscriptions + access list" system is way more functional than "friending," no ads, the DW staff seem to be making a point of avoiding LiveJournal-esque shenanigans, I get the same number of userpics with no ads, and did I mention that there aren't any ads?

There's also a more philosophical reason, which is that I believe Internet users have a responsibility to choose our online homes. I realize this isn't always practical (hi, Facebook). But when it's possible, it means supporting companies with ethical business models. (Don't misunderstand me here; relying on advertising is perfectly legitimate. Stealing money from your users isn't. Neither is compromising your website's security to make a few extra bucks.)

I'll still be crossposting my entries to LiveJournal (including the f-locked ones), but from now on, my Dreamwidth is my primary blog.  (In particular, if you've bookmarked the speculative fiction markets cheat sheet, it will now be maintained there.)  So, if you'd like to come over to Dreamwidth as well, you'll know at least one person in the neighborhood.

Let me know if you're on Dreamwidth already, or if you'd like my one remaining invite code.

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a lone figure looking out over a vast ocean
sarahbrand

January 2011

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