While a very well-written [Chat] with an exciting [Brainstorm], we'll have to pass on it.

Amalia

Woo! Here is to the new Chat Thread, that it may be filled with more acceptances than rejections!

VanityPants

Look what I found!

ElJeffe

Mmmm, new chat.

I know that everyone is probably knee deep in NaNo, but if anyone would like to take a few minutes to crit the story I posted, I would be all kinds of indebted.

CheesecakeRecipe

Bets on page number which Wank gets another publication

ruzkin

Page 2, no doubt.

Wank

Uh hey guys, CR Stories did an interview that is only slightly ridiculous click if you want to check it out / drop a comment

also @ElJeffe I am def reading your story, so that means you owe me another hundred reads, right ? that's how we've been doing it ?

ElJeffe

I read that interview, @Wank. It was a fun read.

Also, I think my 5000+ word "short" stories equal about 5 of your shorts in word count, so we're probably about even.

ruzkin

Getting towards the end of redlining Century of Sand 2. It's been... three years since I started this book, and I'm only approaching draft 2? I need someone to whip me when I slow down.

Chronos21

Guys, I want to write again. Make my 70 hour weeks go away.

Does anyone here like hard sci-fi? Like near future fiction that involves real sciency things? I am wondering if I should post this enormous thing when I am done with it.

Amalia

Um. Does anyone else wonder what the heck Avon is thinking with this? I mean, maybe not the soliciting submissions, but DEFINITELY the deadline of December 10.

Magell

I think they are happy with the idea of getting nano quality stories and then fixing them up before being released next year. Probably a good way to find people who can bang out a quick story for them when they need it.

I don't know why I kept reading that thread. Romance in my stories is left as a very minor subplot.

VanityPants

They would have to be REALLY hurting for subset to want to pick up first draft NaNo stories and go through all of the work to make it publishable instead of fishing through a query pile of stories that have at least been through one round of editing.

tapeslinger

an easy way to get more material than you can use, and a fuckload of attention for it, I guess, re: the Avon thing. it just screamed "We're doing this right around NaNo with the deliberate intentions of being a distraction"

@Chronos21 -- I can't promise significantly more useful feedback than "I liked this and/or didn't" but let me know when it's up?


ugh, 30,000 words into my nano and I reeeeeeally really want to work on the first book more. I am taking a crap-ton of notes on the first book right now because I keep coming up with stuff while I am working slightly behind my regular pace thanks to other crap. I'm hoping I get more work done tomorrow but ehhh. I did come up with some nifty plot things for this book now at least so it feels less than completely irrelevant, but I will be happy to stop feeling guilty for working on the third book when I'd rather be getting the first book ready for beta-ing and whatnot.

Amalia

I am just trying to figure out why they would want to do this to themselves -- unless no one is submitting to them otherwise, like VeeP suggested? I mean, isn't the problem for editors usually way-more-slush-than-we-can-ever-handle? And then to have it be totally rough and terrible on top of that...

I feel like every agent and editor in the world outside of Avon is weeping right now.

VanityPants

I have no earthly idea what they could hope to be gaining. Romance is, to my understanding, one of the genres with the highest submission ratings in the business. I can't imagine Avon is hurting for subs on any front.

My only guess is that doing a call for submissions in the NaNo community is a good way to endear themselves to a ton of people as being a friendly company, maybe.

tapeslinger

that's what I mean, like, "Look at us, WE love newbs" kind of attention :\

MKR

I went four days not knowing about the new thread.

SkutSkut

Well my super old hotmail account has been disabled and I was still waiting for responses from stuff I sent out to that email, that's fan freakin tastic.

Kamar

Think I'm going to bow out of NaNo and dedicate myself to getting a nice buffer on my finances. Tired of every hiccup in bills or paychecks costing me money because I have to borrow or pay late fees--never causes me long term problems, but it stresses me.

Fortunately, at the rate I'm going I'll be two months ahead by December. Maybe I can dedicate next month to novel writing.

Amalia

Well, I just got a revise and resubmit from a publisher on a book that I was totally not expecting to hear something so positive back on.

Publishing confuses me.

zenpotato

Haven't been doing much fun, not-day-job writing lately, but I just spent a good ten minutes considering pumping out some low-grade erotica to publish on Amazon. My biggest fear is that I'll be successful and have to tell people how I made the money.

Euphoriac

Then you can spend the next 50 years bitterly explaining to people why all that money isn't making you happy because no-one wanted to publish that epic novel you made after all the smut made it big. Why can't they understand that it'd your magnum opus and would change the world!?

Or you could swim in your money Scrooge McDuck style, keeping your favourite novel as private as you want?

Magell

Once you get all your erotica published you can spend free time writing stuff you like and claim that's what makes you all your money.

zenpotato

But... what if my mom reads it? (Oh god, what if my mom reads any erotica?)

This went to a dark place, very fast.

zenpotato

On a somewhat more serious note, for those of you who have dabbled with Amazon's KDP program, have you used your normal Amazon account or created a new one?

Edit: To answer my own question, you can have up to three "author pages" on a single Amazon account. So I could publish under two pseudonyms as well as use my own name for normal amazon junk. It seems like a good idea to establish a second account, however, and use that as my "business" account. My real name is going to be associated with the bank account information only. I'm not really paranoid about anonymity, but it is something that would be nice, no matter the genre or type of work published.

ruzkin

Yo Zen,
I have both my pseudonyms running on the same account. There is no overlap unless you want there to be overlap. Good luck with the erotica thing, I've heard on Kindleboards that some people have been successful with it but there are THOUSANDS of others jumping in and that the erotica market is a goldmine that's already been tapped out. It's why my D. D. Marks stuff is trending more towards semi-serious spy fic and less erotic spy fic. Even so, if you make it then super congrats

zenpotato

Thanks! I can see how it is oversaturated (just like urban fantasy and young adult before it), but I have an angle in mind thats at least worth exploring. I think the trick is sexy-noun, making lascivious stories about something else that just so happens to also be porny.

Euphoriac

Porny sci-fi gogo.

Seriously, go through any book store and it's wall-to-wall 50 shades rip-offs. They even have the same font!

ruzkin

Okay, so you think that bookstores are packed with 50 Shades ripoffs? Imagine the Kindle store, that has no barriers to entry, and ten thousand horny fanfic writers all frantically taking their works down from fanfic.net and republishing them at 99c. It's a smorgasbord, great for readers and atrocious for writers. If you want to sell erotica on Kindle, make sure it stands as a story ASIDE from the erotic angle. Sexy scifi, sexy steampunk, sexy paranormal, are all interesting and saleable fields. But sexy sex? It's choked.

SkutSkut

The Sexy Sex Ninjas of Fornication Fortress

Amalia

I actually noticed this choke the last time I tried to browse for a free book in the romance department a few months back. One month I was browsing and it was mostly what you would expect, a broad selection of everything from christian romance to cowboys to a couple erotics, then the next month it was just FLOODED with NSFW covers and smut. And that was the last time I tried to "browse" on amazon. No quality control isn't good for readers either when you can't FIND the gems because you're drowning in the septic brew of whatever the current fad is ad nauseum.

zenpotato

Septic Brew would be a good name for a witchy death metal band.

Brian Krakow

Too late for NaNoWriMo but I'm gonna start a sci-fi novel soon. Haven't written fiction (besides a few short stageplays) for ages, but I'm excited. That will probably change once the stilted dialogue and clumsy exposition starts flowing from my fingers.

Kamar

Tossing every single novel I'm even thinking about writing into a single Scrivener project and just writing on any of them as whim takes me seems to be helping me get prose out without it feeling like work. Won't work all the way through anything, since I'll hit hard parts and start avoiding stories, but it has me writing consistently.

Wank

I've decided to write a dark / humorous literary YA novel about a kid moving from Africa to Northern Canada

ElJeffe

Wank wrote: »

I've decided to write a dark / humorous literary YA novel about a kid moving from Africa to Northern Canada

Too unbelievable.

zenpotato

ElJeffe wrote: »

Wank wrote: »

I've decided to write a dark / humorous literary YA novel about a kid moving from Africa to Northern Canada

Too unbelievable.

Also, racist.

But seriously, nothing funny ever happens in Northern Canada.

ElJeffe

zenpotato wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

Wank wrote: »

I've decided to write a dark / humorous literary YA novel about a kid moving from Africa to Northern Canada

Too unbelievable.

Also, racist.

But seriously, nothing funny ever happens in Northern Canada.

I want to make a snide comment here, but I don't know enough about Northern Canada to be properly dismissive. That's where everyone lives in igloos, right?

zenpotato

I'm not sure how many of you guys work in Google Docs, but I found this theme really helped when I was working fullscreen: http://userstyles.org/styles/53876/linen-background-for-google-docs

The default white/gray was way too bright and was making my eyes tired. This replaces the background field of the document with an iOS/OS X style dark gray linen.

AndToBeLoved

Does anyone here ever do short story writing contests? I have a few short stories I'd like to test the waters with via contests and whatnot. It could be fun. Any suggestions?

tapeslinger

http://duotrope.com maybe?