Home

Previous Entry | Next Entry

Once Upon a Time That Flew By...or, How Editing, Marketing, and Researching Became My World

  • Feb. 27th, 2008 at 9:04 PM
Ghost, Christmas Skull, Back to Life, The Rules of Tempation, Embrace, The Open Vein Xmas Issue, Short Story, Book Picks, Puppeteer, Pride, Skull On Book, Nightfall: A Novel, Edward Ballister
Well, I must definitely state the obvious: it's been over two weeks since my last blog (wow, why does it sound as if I'm on the other side of a partition in a confession booth?).

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly time passes. It's not that I have gone non-existent to the community (my "online" MySpace status and bulletins can assure you of that); rather, I've been enveloped in the other world of a writer. I refer to it as a "dark" place because I don't enjoy it as much as I adore creating the written word and evil struggles between fictitious characters. In all reality, it is the part of the writing process that involves editing and marketing.

In the past couple of weeks, I've been buried in editing and advertising strategies. My office is literally cluttered with marked-up manuscripts of this story or that, half-written pages with ideas that will probably never see the light of day, multiple notepads with disorganized strategies to market my upcoming novel, listings of magazines that I would like to submit work to, handwritten index cards containing character traits for my upcoming novel, and computer printouts of research topics that I refuse to add to my browser "favorites" for fear of overlooking them amongst the hundreds of other "favorites" already saved. Somewhere within this littered area of my office, there is a contract I must review.

After the last paragraph, I took a few minutes to locate that contract in question. Success! This blog really does help keep me somewhat sane. It's a way for me to see my voice as I type versus thinking about something that may be easily eclipsed by a thought right after.

Truly, I'm the last person to lack organization skills. In fact, I'm somewhat of a neat freak. However, these last couple of weeks have been brutal. I came to the realization that I am overwhelming myself with projects. It wasn't intended. It usually isn't. One thing leads to another and, in this industry, one tends to jump all over the latest opportunity that is fresh.

Have I made progress? Absolutely!

Before I get into some of the positive things I'm heading toward, I must bring to light that I received a response back on the submission of my short story, Jailed, to Apex Digest Magazine. Ultimately, it was rejected and I completely understand why. I put the blame on me for not being as observant of the stories they accept. You see, Apex Digest publishes some very powerful, awesome stories. Yet, many of the horror stories they accept tend to have a science fiction undertone to them that Jailed lacks. Many of you may be wondering why I would openly admit that I had a story rejected. However, this blog is all about my travels through the writing life. After all, I wouldn't hesitate to post a blog about any of my fiction pieces being accepted by a publication. I'm real and simply keeping the atmosphere real. Nonetheless, writer's are rejected time and time again, regardless if they've had work previously published. You learn to take whatever criticism may have come with the rejection and move on. That being said, I will be submitting Jailed to another publication in the coming days.

Moving on...

I have decided on two future anthologies to which I will be submitting short stories for possible acceptance and publication. Those stories are Joseph's Request and Sacrilege: Experiments with Holy Water. I have also decided to enter a new short story to the 77th Annual Writer's Digest Writing Competition. I have been researching to discover the perfect tale of the macabre and think I have finally found it! I still have to write it, but the deadline isn't until May. I have organized my short story collection entitled Much of Madness, More of Sin and will be reading through it one final time before I submit it to potential publishers. I've been working on edits of my next novel Double-Goer and have made great progress in the research of my following novel, The Haunted Ones. Regarding my forthcoming novel, Nightfall, I am pleased to informally announce (only because I will blog a formal announcement soon) that I am in the midst of signing a contract for the release of the novel's limited edition hardcover. I promise to keep everybody updated on ALL of the news revolving these many projects in future blogs.

Speaking of the limited edition hardcover of Nightfall, have you entered the promotion to win a free autographed copy yet? If not, you have until midnight of this Friday (technically Saturday March 1, 2008). The winner will be announced on March 2, 2008. All you have to do is "friend" Stefan Powell (the main character of Nightfall) on his MySpace page. For details, you can check out the "Contests/Promotions" page of my official website (www.AndrewWolter.com).

Well, February has truly flown by without a second glance! I look forward to blogging again about my many projects very soon.