The Muse Online Conference 2011- Day One

I don't know who actually follows this blog, but I thought I'd use it for the time being to write a post or two about my progress through the Muse Conference this year. I've attended this free online conference since its inception five or six years ago. It's always fun, it's always a little bit different, and I'm pretty sure I always feel this kind of dithering feeling at the beginning. Unlike other conferences where you leave your daily life behind, in this one you find yourself in the middle of it, and you will frequently find that someone has left to take their dog out or sign for a package, or because a storm has knocked out their internet. You learn to take these kinds of things in stride.

Today was a bit dicey. There seemed to be an internet problem from this end, and I think there may have been some problem on the site itself. But late in the afternoon, everyone seemed to be working again and I hit my stride, found myself entering workshops and submitting samples and getting into the spirit of the whole thing once again. I forget that this is pretty much how it always happens. I forget that the domestic space disappears and the conference drags me in. Bad news for the house. Good news for the writer. 

Southeast Review--Writer's Regimen

As if I hadn't thrown enough at you with the sometimes overwhelming but always fun Muse Online Writers Conference  (sorry, registration is now closed for the year), I've got another October challenge for you. What about trying the Southeast Review's 30 day Writer's Regimen? You get several different sorts of writing prompts each day, an author interview, and even a chance to get published. It will cost you fifteen bucks, but I've done this before and it's money very well spent.

The Muse Online Writers Conference 2011

I've been a bit busy to think about this till now, but I thought I should mention that registration is still open until September 25th for this FREE online conference  hosted by wonder woman Lea Schizas. It is absolutely free and is jam packed with workshops and chats for writers of every stripe. You can also register to participate in a pitch session, but you've got to do that before the 25th too.

I'm not sure how many years I've been 'attending' this conference. Some years I've given it my full attention, some years I've only been able to tune in after work. It doesn't matter. I've gotten something useful out of it every time.

So what are you waiting for?

announcing Grift Magazine

John Kenyon, who writes the blog Things I'd Rather Be Doing and is the man behing the upcoming ebook project Grimm Tales (about which, more later), announced today that he is going to head up a new hybrid crime magazine. It sounds pretty exciting.

Grift Magazine, a new print publication focused on crime fiction, will debut in February 2012.

Grift will be published in print form three times yearly — February, June and October — and will feature a mix of short crime fiction, reviews, interviews and more.

In addition, griftmagazine.com will be home to more content that will include flash fiction, review, interviews and news from the world of crime fiction.

Check it OUT .

Tales of the Hunt

I finally got around to reading Nathanael Green's excellent 'The Slut Buck' today, and you can too. Just download the absolutely free Apiary Magazine and make your way to page 142. You'll be glad you did.

Oddly enough, I too have a story floating out there in the ether that relates to hunting. I've been thinking about it a bit lately, as the magazine I wrote it for, Eleven Eleven, is celebrating--what else?--the publication of their eleventh edition next weekend. What's nice is that they have invited all contributors past and present to a brunch, and have consistently worked to create a community of writers rather than the common relation between authors and magazines, which is that they publish you and, there, that's the end of it.

Anyway, you can read my hunting story HERE.

Compare and contrast, as they say...

 

Mammoth Book of Best British Crime, Volume 8

Rather than tooting my own horn yet again, I thought I'd mention this excellent crime anthology I've been reading. I'm about a hundred pages in and haven't hit a clunker yet. I'll probably review it elsewhere when I've actually finished it, but I really like the mix of famous names, not famous names and dark to light selections. It's got me thinking about authors I'd heard of though hadn't read yet, as well as given me a keen interest in the up and comers.

I think one of the key things about crime short stories is that they are such great examples of storytelling. They're never slight in the way that even good 'literary fiction' can be slight, because by definition in a crime novel, something has to have happened. 

Check it out. I got my copy through Book Depository . Although they're currently out of stock, they're usually pretty prompt about getting more in if there's a demand.

Carpathian Shadows

It's been several years now since these anthologies came out, but I got the usual friendly email about royalties from Rob Preece, publisher of Books for a Buck, the other day, and thought it would be a good time to mention this collection in which I have a story, partly because it's taken me awhile to put anything up on this blog, and partly because the process here was kind of interesting.  

My involvement with the project came about through having just taken part in the Muse Online Writers Conference created by the fabulous and really rather amazing Lea Schizas. I'll try to write that up soon, but if you have a little time to give to it in the beginning of October, this free writers conference has some great stuff going for it. Anyway, at the end of the conference, Lea posted a call for submissions for a new anthology. She gave the basic premise, and people were asked to submit stories around this idea. I noticed just now that an Amazon reviewer, Victor J. Banis, gives a concise account of the parameters:

This is a theme-anthology, horror stories with a bit of a twist. The visitors to the Cornifu Hotel, deep in the Carpathians Mountains of Transylvania, are individually invited for a free one day bus excursion to nearby Erdely Castle, said to be haunted. Each story is about a different group of travelers to visit the castle. And with that setting and that common theme, one can rightly expect vampires and ghosts and werewolves--just about all those things that go bump in the night show up here.

As it turned out, there were enough contributors to create two volumes, so that is what happened. My story ended up in Volume Two. In retrospect, the Volumes One and Two idea might not have been the best, as the stories are all standalones and don't have to be read in any particular order.

I am not really a horror story writer, or reader, although I love both Frankenstein and Dracula, as well as some tales from Poe. So my story didn't turn out to be particularly horrific, though I think it's still a pretty good tale.

As with most anthologies of this sort, there was some help with promotion expected, and although I can't now remember what I did in that line, we did all 'show up' one night at a live chat room and chatted with people about the book. I didn't really get to know the people from the first volume, but the writers in the second group were a nice bunch, and I even took a course from one of my co-authors, Kristin Johnson, on short screenplays at the next year's Muse conference which was very good.


Should you be interested, the books are available at the above mentioned Books for a Buck  (this link is to volume 2), and I just happened to notice and recall that my blogging pal has his review of my story linked there. He was kind enough to write a complimentary take on it. And if you do like horror, you should definitely check out his novel at Lyrical Press, where it is available in various ebook formats.