I picked up a Nook this Tuesday as a birthday gift to myself with some help from gift cards from some friends and my wife. I've always been an avid reader, but don't consume books quite as quickly as a once did when I was a kid. I don't know if it's a shortening of attention span (I used to be able to read for hours on end) or if it's the responsibilities of adult life catching up to me (which prevents me from having hours on end to read) or if it's something else entirely outside my mental grasp. However, with the recent addition of the Nook to my pile of techno-gadgets, I've found myself reading more.

Maybe it's the newness of the device and I'm still deeply in love with it. Maybe it's the convenience of being able to carry thousands of books with me everywhere I go. Maybe I've just found the perfect accessory to my reading style.

I've heard that people read slower on eReaders than they do on paper books, but I've found that I'm blazing through page after page of the book that I'm working on. Of course, it could be that the book is by one of my all-time favorite authors, Lawrence Watt-Evans. The book that I'm rapidly churning through is a horror novel entitled The Nightmare People. I didn't realize it was horror when I started it because I'm used to Watt-Evans's sci-fi and fantasy works. Even though it's in a genre that I normally don't read much of, I'm really enjoying it.

For folks out there that may stumble across this, I high recommend the Nook from Barnes and Noble, and my first purchase, The Nightmare People, is especially good. The book was written in the '80s, so please forgive Lawrence's use of a "high tech 386" reference. That one reference really brought home the date of the book and brought back some fantastic memories of my computer usage several decades ago.

I've neglected my web site for the past two months and it shows. I have news about the partial that was requested by the agent: rejection. I'm not sure why it was rejected because all I received was a form letter with a customized apology for not being interested. I wish I knew why it was turned down, but I guess I'll never know. I'm fully aware that agents are way too busy for follow-up emails and advice to people (other than their clients) and such. I'm not going to pester the agent about her choice. I'll just accept it and move on.

The rejection was almost two months ago, and I haven't really written much since then. It's not because of the rejection... that only bummed me out for a few days. It's just that life caught up to me and I haven't had the time I used to have to dedicate to writing. I know that's a lame excuse, but I'm using it for the moment.

I do feel the itch to write coming back very strongly, so in the very near future, I'll carve out some time for myself and get back to writing at the furious pace that I'm accustomed to.

I'm currently doing a massive happy dance (mostly internalized at the moment) because I met a great agent today. I pitched my book to her, and she readily jumped on the chance to see a partial submission (the first 30 pages) of my book, WARMAIDEN.

I've learned quite a bit at this weekend's PPW Conference, and one of the things I found out is that my first two pages were all backstory that needed to be shown instead of told. I knew better than to do this, but I wrote it that way anyways. It's time to yank out the two pages of telling and replace them with a FULL CHAPTER that will be my new first chapter of the book that shows what I told.

This means that I can't immediately send off the first 30 pages. I have some work to do first. That work will take me about 3-4 hours, and I strongly feel that I'll be able to sneak in those hours by the end of Monday night and get the submission off to the agent by that time.

Until I get a chance to sit at a keyboard and crank out the new first chapter, I'm busy floating on cloud nine in the happiness of knowing that my story has captured the interest of a professional in the field.

I started my first round of revisions on WARMAIDEN last week, and they are going quite well. I've only had to add 300 words total. Well, that's the delta. I've removed quite a few and added a little more than what I've removed. I just finished all revisions of chapter 1-3 (the book is 20 chapters total.) My critique group in the CSFWG has critiqued through chapter 13 in their hands. I hope to be done with those revisions before they receive chapter 14 later this month. The overall flow of the story has not changed a bit, but the prose supporting the story is much strong and works very well. I can't wait to see what they have to say about chapters 4-6 (which is my next section.) I'll probably start those tomorrow during lunch.

A few days ago I received a rejection notice (and one of the better ones!) from PseudoPod. I had submitted ZOMBIE C.L.O.W.N.S. to them and their very nice letter said the story was too humorous for their market, and the letter used the plural words "we" and "us." This meant I made it past the slush pile and was, most likely, given serious consideration. I'm very pleased to have advanced even that far, and I hope to find new markets for the humorous/horror short story in the near future.

Why is this a trifecta? Well, this marks the third rejection from Escape Artists, Inc. My first rejection from them was for AUTOPULSE from EscapePod. The second rejection came for WHISPERING THROUGH THE VEIL from PodCastle (which was subsequently published in Static Movement a month later.) The third rejection of the trifecta is the one that I'm talking about from PseudoPod. I love the work that Stephen Eley started with EscapePod and that continues on with PseudoPod and PodCastle, and I still hope to someday join the ranks of a writer that has his work appear on one of those fine venues.

If you're not sure what's up with Escape Artists, then I'll give you the quick blurb. They are one of the premier markets for free short fiction (though they do pay their authors via donations from the general public.) EscapePod handles the science fiction market. PseudoPod is the horror arena, and PodCastle, the newest of the three, takes care of the fantasy genre. If you're interested in some of the best stories in the world in any of these three genres, I strongly urge you to follow the links above and check them out. I've been listening to them all (from episode #1) for a little over a year now. I'm completely caught up with PodCastle and PseudoPod, and I'm a little under a year behind on EscapePod because it had the longest lead on me than the other two. I can't wait to catch up to the current-day stories to see how the future has changed.

I am VERY HAPPY to announce that I just finished the first draft of my first book. It weighs in at 97,700 words. WARMAIDEN is finished! However, it's not DONE. Now come the rewrites based on critiques from the CSFWG. From the feedback I've received so far, it's not going to be that rough.

It's been a while since I've given anyone an update on the status of WARMAIDEN. The book is coming along nicely. At the end of NaNoWriMo in November, I was up to 60,000 words. Since that time I've crept up to 80,000 words, and I hope to be done around the 110,000 word mark. That's probably at least two months away.

Once I'm all done with the writing, then comes time to go back through the book with a fine-toothed comb -- and my critiques from the Colorado Springs Fiction Writer's Group -- and fix any glaring mistakes or problems with the manuscript. In a way, I'm looking forward to the edits. The main reason I'm looking forward to that part of the process is that it means that I've written a book. Finally.

I'm not naive enough to think that just because the book is written that it's done and finished. Even once I'm done with the first round of edits, I'm not done with the book. I still have to land an agent, go through their editorial process (if any), get the book in front of a publisher, and go through their many rounds of edits, and finally get it printed and on a shelf. Until I see it sitting on a shelf on my local bookstore, I'm not considering the project completed.

Yeah... I've got a long ways to go.

NaNoWriMo 2009 rolled to a close last night, and I was writing right up until midnight in an attempt to squeeze out a few more words. I did get a few thousand more of them put into WARMAIDEN, but the NaNoWriMo site cut me off. I went there at two minutes to midnight (there's my shout out to Iron Maiden fans), but the site had already locked down and claimed that NaNoWriMo 2009 had ended. I couldn't put in my final tally of 44,435 words for the month.

If you recall, I had set an original goal of 10,000 words for the month of November. I hit that on the third day of the month and was ecstatic with my accomplishment. I knew I couldn't keep up the pace of 3,333 words per day, so I set a new goal of 25,000 words. I managed to hit that on November 17th, but I didn't stop just because I had reached my word count. I have a book to finish!

By the time the end of the month rolled around, I had reached my end total of 44,435 and I'm extremely happy with my accomplishment. I know. I know. I didn't reach the magical 50,000th word for the month, so I can't claim to be an official winner of the challenge. In my eyes, I've accomplished a great deal.

I'm up to 60,435 words in my novel, which puts me at around 60% complete with the first draft. I know that once I pump out the remaining 40,000-ish words in the book, that the real work of editing will begin. I've already put chapters 4-6 in front my critique groups, but I'll have to wait and see what they say come the end of December. I'm hoping to have the entire book in front of them by February, so I can receive the feedback at the end of March. This will allow me the first part of April to revise as quickly as I can in time to present WARMAIDEN to agents at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference.

Wish me luck! It's a tight schedule.

Last night, thanks to the PPW's Chris Mandeville and her great organizational skills, I was able to throw a few more words out at the screen. My grand total for the month thus far is 25,726 words. That means I hit my personal goal of 25,000 words. Will I make the 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo this month? It's doubtful, but I think I'll get really close. I'm very happy with the prose that I've generated so far this month, and I think it will stand the test of time and my critique groups in the CSFWG.

This puts me at a total of 41,726 words for my book, and I'm envisioning it to be around 90,000 to 110,00 words when I'm done. It's a bit long for a first novel, so I may have to cull out some of my more wordy passages, but we'll see how things go. I'm almost half way done with the book! Yay!

I'm eleven days into NaNoWriMo, and I've managed to crank out 20,000 words. That puts me at a grand total of 36,000 for the book. Having reached this milestone is a great one for me. I'm one-third the way through my word count, and an equal distance through my plotline and page counts. I managed to reach page 101 with the 36,000th word, and I was expecting to write about 300 pages on the book. This makes me very happy as it feels like everything is falling right into place according to my plan.

I can't wait to get the manuscript (in 50 pages increments) in front of my CSFWG critique groups to see what they think of the first draft that I have done so far. I'm sure they'll come up with all sorts of great ideas and improvements. They always do.