Progress

Busy working on short pieces for anthology submissions. I completed and sent off three this week. It's a nice change of pace. My brain just wasn't ready to complete the third book yet and I needed to keep writing so what better way to do that than to develop short stories that can be completed in a day or two, start to finish. Now, let's see what the rest of the world thinks of them!

Short Story Submission - Cutting My Fluff

I completed a short story for submission to an anthology today. When I finished the first draft I realized that I had gone over the maximum word count per the guidelines. I'm not sure why, but I convinced myself that it was 5000 words when it was actually 4000. I cut roughly 700 words from the story and thought, with this limited word count, the story will surely suffer from the loss! When I reread it, however, it was a much cleaner, crisper, better organized piece. It's funny how well you can identify and erase your "fluff" when you have to! It was definitely an eye opening exercise for me, anyway.

Free Kindle Book for Writers

I grabbed a free copy of Jeff Goins e-book today. I think that most independent authors are already familiar with the tips that Jeff outlines but this little e-book is very well written and I appreciated seeing that Jeff, like me, had experienced much of the same self-doubt and struggle. Grab a copy if you like.

Jeff Goins You Are a Writer (So Start Acting Like One)

Excerpt from At Second Sight Chapter 8

Thomas bears witness as Katie discovers the ashrays:

Once grounded, she shone the light on the water again. There was a slight disturbance on the surface and both Thomas and Katie strained to see what was moving below. Almost in tandem, they both jumped backward. Katie lost her foothold and her tennis shoes made a sudden splash. The things in the water responded to the disturbance with a blood curdling scream and splashed aggressively as they made a hasty retreat further away from the bank. Katie regained her balance and more composure than Thomas would have thought possible and shone the light out on water but there was nothing there to see.

Thomas couldn’t believe what he had just seen.  They were close enough to the surface to be seen clearly.  There in the marshes of Bear Willow State Park were pale, grey faces in the water. Based on their fierce reaction to light, they were probably not apparitions or living people but whatever they were, they had human facial features and made human-like sounds and their cries sounded more like shrieks of pain than from fear as if the light could somehow injure them.