Category: Getting Published

Writing, Publishing, Editing and Life in 2022

12/30/2021

If there's one thing I've learned about making these goal lists, and I've been doing more than one per year (I just haven't blogged them), is that they're tough to do...mainly because I always end up spreading myself thin, like Bilbo Baggins (like a thin slice of butter spread over too much bread). I can't keep going at the pace I have been going. I end up wearing myself out and accomplishing very little in the way of personal gain. I work way too hard to make money, for a self-professed socialist. I do it in order to try and retire before I die...and I hope I can make it.

There's some things I do for fun that I'm going to give up. Well, one thing, really. I've decided that if I ever have enough time to finish reading the submissions for the next two issues of The Were-Traveler, I'm going to stop publishing that. Now that my public media job has gone full time and I'm still editing part time and trying to write fiction (and do the heavy research that goes with writing fiction), and trying to self-publish my short story and poetry books... whew! There, you see? Time is of the essence, and I just don't have the time to read through a huge slush pile anymore. I wish I did. The magazine was getting good. Very good. But when I don't have the time to read the stories or respond to writers in a more timely fashion...that's not good. So, I'm putting the Traveler to bed. At least for the time being. Later on, I may decide to publish a twice a year short poetry thing, but that's going to be waaaayyy down the line.

So, I did succeed in fulfilling some of my 2021 goals. I've gotten myself out in nature, I've lost weight, and I've begun putting together some e-books of previously published and unpublished stories and poetry. What do I have planned for 2022?

More of the same...and some other goals as well.

Here's a list (flexible, I'm being very flexible with myself these days) of my goals and ambitions for the year of the Water Tiger:

Continue my research reading for the novels that I will begin working on in 2023:
1. So Lonesome I Could Cry
2. Zen & the Art of Alien Diplomacy
3. See the post titled: Reading Goals for 2022
Continue a little writing here on my back-burner novel (I'm almost done!):
1. The Strange Blue Days of Dr. Fountainbrew
Get the 2 e-books finished and up on Amazon for sale (Mamma needs to keep buying Apple stock on Stash!):
1. Four & Twenty Blackbirds: Short Stories & Poems
2. Little Paper Parasols: Haiku & Other Shortform Poetry
Start prep work on the Florida-based short form poetry e-book:
1. Tentative Title: Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry on Florida Nature & Life
Begin prep for another e-book on my previously published and unpublished speculative fiction poetry. I don't have a title yet...well no...rather I have a couple of titles in mind but they don't really grab me
Keep getting out in nature, hiking and seeing the wild critters that inspire me to write more haiku, senryu, tanka, and other short form poems. My coworkers gave me a state park pass for Christmas, so there are lots of state parks on my "To-Do and To-See" list for 2022:
1. Cabin stay at Myakka River State Park...let's get squatchy... We are staying in the squatchiest cabin in the park. We better practice our whoops.
2. A weekend cabin stay at Fanning Springs State Park...a cool dip in the springs & a cabin with a screened, wrap-around porch! It's a long way for a weekend trip, but sometimes, with state park cabins you have to take what you can get. We will still have fun. Val may get to do some snorkeling. The park itself has a nature trail plus we will walk a little of the Nature Coast State Trail if we have time.
3. A trip back to Oscar Scherer State Park (in the hope of walking the Blue Trail and seeing some endangered Florida Scrub Jays)
4. New State Park visit goals include: Colt Creek State Park in the Green Swamp [UPDATE: DONE ON NEW YEARS EVE MORNING! Report soon on hiking blog], Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park, and Fakahatchee Strand Preserve State Park (home of the endangered Florida Panther--not sure we'll get to that one this year, it's pretty far away) and Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park (need a tent for this one, as it is a dark sky paradise for astronomers and I want to see me some stars! So we'll need to camp out at this one. Sadly, they don't have cabins. I did registered to win an Airstream Interstate 24X. Sure would be nice to win that thing! Not sure we'll be able to do this one this year either).
5. Other wild areas I'd like to see this year:
  1. Goethe State Forest
  2. Myakka State Forest
  3. Ocala National Forest
  4. Some more of the Withlacoochee State Forest (just because I love calling it the 'Coochee. Plus we've hiked some of it and not actually seen the river it is named for...and that is just so...so...wrong). Also, it's a really cool, hilly area that's not far from home.
    1. For the above State Forests: ..walk a trail for the Trailwalker program!
  5. Mosaic Peace River Park or another nature park along the Peace River (but probably not Peace River State Forest, as it is one of the few that doesn't have a restroom. I mean, WTF?)
    1. NOTE TO SELF: I need to write something about all the rivers I've seen in Florida. It will likely be a poem...or perhaps several. Who the hell knows, maybe an essay! Nah...most likely a linked haiku.
  6. Dead River Park
    1. Right next door to Hillsborough River State Park and part of it is on the Hills River. Would be cool to see this park as some squatchy happenings have happened there in the past.
  7. John B. Sargeant Park
    1. Also down Hwy. 301 from Hillsborough River State Park. Has a cool boardwalk trail (at least as far as I can tell from the pictures of it online).
6. I need to finish the last two issues of The Were-Traveler and put it to sleep for a bit, maybe forever. Sad, but I just don't have the time it takes to devote to a story magazine. I'm only one person. This is actually higher up on my to-do list. I really need to get it off my plate.
7. I need to write a couple of new short pieces and get them submitted somewhere. I hope I am able to do that this year.
8. Take it easy...as much as possible. These last few years have been horrible for people, and I'm no exception.
9. Remember to breathe. And never stop dreaming.

If you're interested, I started a blog page on my reok_weirdworldview site to blog about the nature trips and hikes we do. I need to give that site a bit more love, I've been neglecting it.

That's it for 2022 plans, and I do believe that is enough. If I can accomplish half of it, I'll consider it a success.

What are your plans for the new year? I hope you don't spread yourself as thin as I do.

Happy New Year! May the Year of the Water Tiger enrich us All!

Me inside hollow Cypress tree (I believe it's a Cypress) at Hillsborough River State Park.

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2021 Accomplishments: Life, Research, Writing, Self-Publishing, Etcetera...

12/20/2021

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Sometimes, it doesn't feel like I've done all that much this year. But then I started making a list of all the things that I have done, all the little ups that countered the downs and made 2021 a pretty dog gone good year for me, all in all.

Here's the best things that happened, or that I accomplished, this past year:

Put together an e-book of twenty-four short speculative fiction stories and poems that I've had published in magazines and anthologies. The book will be titled Four and Twenty Blackbirds, which has to do with one of the stories in the book, as well as the number of tales and rhymes.
Wrote an amazing number of short poems in February of 2021 for the short poetry challenge that I participate in every year, the Post-It Note Poetry Challenge. I wrote well over 100 haiku, senryu, and tanka in February as well as other types of short poems, and I'm still writing them, though not quite at that pace. 2021 has been my best year for writing poetry so far.
In November, I put together another e-book containing many of the haiku, senryu, and other short poems that I wrote in February 2021 (and before and after) titled after my online poetry website little paper parasols.
I began planning three other e-books (not sure if all of these will play out, but hoping some do):
1. one of speculative stories and
2. one of speculative fiction poetry (both published and unpublished) and
3. another of short poems only about Florida nature, tentatively titled "Florida Swamplillies: Haiku & Short Poetry About the Sunshine State" or "Lillies from the Swamp." Something like that. It will include some, but not all of the poems from the other previously mentioned short poetry e-book.
4. I've got an idea for a 4th poetry book on dark poetry, but as of now it's just an idea...no poems written for it yet.
I began planning my novel/novella about Sasquatch. Yes, I'm writing a book about Bigfoot. It's currently in the research/planning process. Parts of it will spill over into another fiction project I'm planning about aliens.
I've lost a lot of weight this year. Over 30 pounds. Part of it is from hiking in the Florida woods as part of my research for So Lonesome I Could Cry (see above). Another part of it is from a diet pills and diet my nurse has me on. But it's working.
I managed to sell another story and poem or two, but I also started a blog to write about weird stuff and anime but I haven't been writing in it much due to all the research and planning and creating e-books.
I started an account on Stash and am managing to invest a little. It's up one day, down the next. That's the market right now, but Stash lets you do it a little at a time. I have a personal and retirement account that I handle, and a smart account that I throw some money into and Stash's people invest for me. I try not to invest in crappy companies that are bad for the environment or are shitty to indigenous peoples or their employees.
I've been saving money for two years now in my banking accounts and have a bit stacked up. I'm going to invest a little of it in 2022, but I'm also going to keep saving. Ever seen those memes about saving money by taking some out of your pay and doubling it every week? Well, I created a couple of those tailored for people like me who get paid bi-weekly. It's worked, like I've said. With me investing in Stash, I may do a lower amount of bi-weekly deposits in 2022 than I did this year.
I've been taking real, honest to goodness vacations instead of stay-cations. Hiking and looking for the Big Guy, yes, and I've got two big trips planned with my partner in 2022. Myakka River State Park (squatching for three-four days) and Fanning Springs, the latter more for a weekend swimming getaway for Val and for us both to see the Suwannee River and a little bit of the Nature Coast State Trail. In 2021, we went to Lake Wales, saw some real Florida mountains (more like hills really, but pretty big ones!) and we went to Bok Tower. Someone saw some gnomes there in the fifties, but there doesn't seem to be any there now. (This is a real cryptid historical account of these gnomes in Eerie Florida by Mark Muncy).
A tiny flash story of mine was given an Honorable Mention award in a popular yearly fiction contest. I've been writing a 300-word story for Queer Sci-Fi's yearly anthology contest since I heard about it in 2018. In 2021 my story "To Have and to Hold and to Hold and to Hold" (a tiny tale that envisions the great great great grand-relative of Cthulhu--xe was strictly a female but got a male mating organ surgically implanted so xe could reproduce--going to a dating convention to find xemself some wives) was given the accolade of Honorable Mention, along with a handful of other great stories. Perhaps someday, I'll win one of the big prizes in the contest. It's always a worthy challenge trying to write a 300 word story that makes sense to readers.
My poem "Star Trip(tych)." was nominated for a Rhysling Award with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. It was originally published at the end of 2020 in Issue 2 of the magazine Speculative North. The poem was then reprinted in The 2021 Rhysling Award Anthology. Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association.

I haven't sold as many stories or poems this year. Mainly because I'm concentrating on planning and publishing longer works. I did sell a couple of small speculative poems in 2021 that will be published in 2022, in Scifaiku magazine, but that will be for me to write about in next year's post. I will probably make a goal of writing and submitting a few short stories and poems in 2022. Or not. I'm gonna play it as she lays, as they say. And 2022 will likely hold a crap ton of research for me. I'll be writing about that in my post on 2022 Reading Goals.

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Two New Poems to be Published in Scifaikufest & a Publication that Fell Through & a New Story in the Works

9/13/2021

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Whew! That's one helluva post title. Let's take it one step at a time...

I recently submitted about 5 new short poems to Scifaikufest. They've published some of my little bitty poems in the past. Out of the ones I sent, they accepted "ode to mars" and "future california; death comes to silicon valley" for publication in their November 2022 issue. That's generally how long it takes to see a your work published by them. It's a popular zine for short science fiction and fantasy poets, so they fill up issues quickly and move on to the next...and then the next...etc.

"ode to mars" is a 7-7-7 poem, a poetry form I invented. "future california: death comes to silicon valley" is in another poetry form I invented, the octain.

The 7-7-7 form came about when I was first trying to write haiku, a form that is strict in syllable count and topic. It's three lines, generally, with the syllable count for each line being 5-7-5. In the beginning, it would frustrate me to not be able to make those exact syllable counts, so I ended up with a lot of poems that were not perfect in form. I began to notice that a few of them had line counts of 7-7-7, or seven syllables each line. I thought instead of that being a bad thing, to turn it into a good thing, since seven is viewed as a lucky number by some folks. So, my 7-7-7 poetry form was born. I've since stopped giving so much of a shit about my syllable counts for haiku and senryu (haiku's little sister that's about human stuff instead of about nature stuff, like haiku are supposed to be). I now call my uneven haiku and senryu "rogues" and leave it at that. I've even written a "reverse" haiku or two, where the syllable counts are 7-5-7. Whatever. Poetry should be fun, Basho!

The octain is a form I set out to create. I wanted to do something strict in syllable count, with a volta (a change in the tone of the poem around the middle of a poem), and one based on mathematics, sort of like the fibonacci poem. So you could say my octain form was born from the fibonacci. I decided the poem should be eight lines. The first line would be the subject of the poem and the last line would be the opposite of the subject. The mathematical syllabic scheme would be based in multiplication for the first 4 lines, then division for the last 4. Example. If the first line has two-syllables, the second line would have four, the third six, the fourth eight. Then around the fifth line is where the "volta" or change in tone should occur, leading the reader to the conclusion, the opposite of what we started with, and counting down in syllables again. The fifth line will repeat eight syllables, then the countdown to the final line which will have two syllables. So the syllablic scheme for a poem that starts with two syllables would be 2-4-6-8-8-6-4-2. I am very rigid in this form. This works best when you keep the first line syllable count to under 3. I've done 4, but it's hard. Very hard. See an example of one of my first octain's below, "the open and close."

That's my news on that. I'll publish the article I wrote on the octain in my upcoming poetry e-book.

Now for the not-so good news. I blogged in December 2020 that I was going to have three poems published in March or so of 2021 with a Pakastani publisher Paper Djinn Press in an anthology called Lyric. Alas, March 2021 came and went. As did the following months until now. We got a email that they were behind, but then the information stopped. About a week ago, I got an email from the American editor who said he had lost touch with the publishers as well, and they might have gone belly up as they were having financial woes. Hey, it's happened to more than one good independent publisher in the wake of Covid. So, I will be trying to put my poems "Red," "under the robotic umbrella in the rain," and Musical Thought Drones Are Here to Assassinate You Again Today" back out on the market again soon.

I also have a new short thing in the works. It's likely to be longer than a short story, but not quite a novel. It's a story about what happens to government workers when they've gone too far afoul of the company, and the gov just can't kill them (they may need information from them later). It's called "So Lonesome I Could Cry" and I'm digging into the research on it now, which involves watching a lot of weird TV shows made by a production company called Small Town Monsters and reading a lot of weird books and websites, and listening to a lot of podcasts involving high strangeness of all kinds, including the podcast by SMT. So, needless to say, the "woo" in me is having a lot of fun!

Other than these things, I'm working on editing for others and myself. For myself, I'm working on finishing up my first collection of published speculative fiction and poetry, called Four & Twenty Blackbirds. I've also started to put together a collection of short poetry to publish in an e-book, I'll begin that project soon too.

Well, that's me all caught up now.

the open and close (an octain)

begin
a breath to start
a going forward stance
moment of something new and great
nevertheless succumbs to fate
missteps halting the dance
stopping the heart
ending

~m.x. kelly, 2018

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Planning a Poetry Book for November Scrivener Project

8/30/2021

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As I mentioned in one of my last posts, I was considering uploading another Scrivener e-book project for November to (half-ass) engage in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). It's been a couple of years since I've done it and I miss the camaraderie. I want to connect with old friends there and cheer them on this year.

I debated on uploading another speculative fiction (science fiction, fantasy, and horror) collection of published and unpublished stories and poems (one that collects mostly some of my very early stuff--and some newer stuff--from the days when I was a naive forty-year old writer who didn't know what a vanity press was). Despite this, I was proud of being newly published and these stories weren't that terrible at all, in fact, a few of them have been republished over the years, in more savory and paying markets.

I also considered that my literary poetry doesn't get much attention at all, and I don't really try to publish it (I tried early on to get into literary magazines, and it's very competitive, so I never made very many waves there). I joined groups to get better at writing poetry, and one of them was Post-it-Note-Poetry group on Facebook, or PiNP for short. Each February for the past several years, we post our post it note poems...short poems in screen shots and encourage one another in our efforts to become better poets. This led to me searching Pixabay and Pexels for images to use with my poetry...something I learned from my senior university professor, Dr. Trey Conner, is called multimodal poetry. I took his course in my last semester of my Bachelors of English program at University of South Florida-St. Petersburg and made that years' Post-it-Note-Poetry my first project where I used images consistently for every poem and wrote a poem every day. I posted them both to Facebook and our course Wiki page. Below is one of the poems from that year (2015), the first year I managed to write a PiNP every single day. I was as proud of that accomplishment as I was for graduating that spring Summa Cum Laude. Were they all good poems? Hell, no! Some were terrible. But I got over my fear of putting them out there for not one...but two...two audiences. Some of them, and some of my earlier and later multimodal poems are now out there for the world to see, with my online chapbook little paper parasols.

What does all this PiNP shit have to do with NaNoWriMo?

Patience, my young grasshoppers!

This past year, 2021's Post it Note Poetry was another gangbuster year for me. In fact, I blew 2015's year out of the damn water. I decided this year to focus on very short forms. Haiku, senryu (haiku that are not nature/season related), tanka, etc. I ended up writing over 130 poems in 28 days!

Some of them are very good. Quite a few of them. And, unfortunately, not all of them could be made into multimodal poems for PiNP that year. So, they are just sitting in a Google Doc file. Getting added to, every now and then, because even though the flow of words has stemmed some, I still get a day or two once in awhile where something comes to me. The rush of words will hit me like a tsunami again and I have to write. And now, I'm trying to write a new poem every day. I don't know if I can...and I don't push it.

So...after much thinking, I decided my NaNoWrimo project is going to be a book of recent short-form poetry...some of the PiNp stuff, and some of the stuff that never got a chance to be seen, and even some of the new stuff I've written since. I don't have a title for it yet, I don't know what poems I'm going to use for it, and I don't know how many... I have started a book project for it in Scrivener (novel writing application) and begun to arrange it a little bit. The only thing, I do know is that with the exception of some poems I wrote this past year called SHS (Short Horror Stories, actually poems that are horror poems--channeled a bit of EAP as well as William Carlos Williams this year) there won't be any other speculative poetry in it.

Because this is all stuff that I have already written, it would not be fair of me to treat it as a regular NaNoWriMo, where I post daily or weekly word counts to the NaNo website in the competition (with others and one's self) to complete the month with a 50,000 word novel. I am going to sign up so I can be a cheerleader for any of my writer friends who are participating and so I can get some tips on advanced usage of the novel writing and book formatting (paperback and e-book, but mostly for e-book) software apps Scrivener and perhaps Vellum. Vellum is a very expensive but easy to use (so I've been told) book layout/publishing program. Considering that it may be worth my while to invest in it. Scrivener's "compile" feature to create e-books (I haven't yet used it to create a paperback book for Create Space or any other paperback publishing venue yet) is a right royal pain in the ass. But it is super for planning your books, laying them out, and even storing your research, and cover images. Not to mention writing the actual book, which is really what Scrivener is for. I also use Scrivener to write some longer short stories.

So, now that I have that settled in my mind, I need to figure out which poems out of all my short ones I will publish in the book...then where I will place them.

Working out the kinks will be the tricky part, but at least I've my mind made up and got a start on the project for my first e-book of literary short poetry.

November, here I come!

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Poems Published in the 2017 Winter Issue of Star*Line...

1/6/2017

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Two of my recent speculative fiction poems were published in Star*Line, one of the flagship magazines of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.

The poems were published in issue 40.1, Winter 2017, the first issue of the new year, kicking 2017 off to a better start for me (so far) than the previous year.

"maybe there are," is featured on page 4 of the magazine, which is a good sign that the editor liked it well enough to place it this high up in the magazine. This poem is a tribute to my love of thinking about microcosms: a small world that cannot be seen by the naked human eye.

"Pop Culture Fairy Tale Tweet" appears in the middle of the magazine, and it is the poem that won an Honorable Mention in SFPA's 2016 Poetry Contest.

I am honored to have made it into this magazine once again. Star*Line also published a poem of mine called "poem in the shape of a starship" in their Summer 2016 issue (39.3).

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RESOLVED! 2 for 1/2! Plus Upgrades

1/2/2017

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It feels good to be off to a great start writing in the new year.

And so far, two of my resolutions are checked off.

First, I wanted to write more blog posts, and although I did not specify and make any certain plans known in my original resoultion post, secretly I made a challenge to myself to write (and publish) a piece for three consecutive days. Today's post is the third.

I'm not sure I'll be able to continue writing daily posts once I start working both jobs again (and, Goddess help me, I'm considering trying to start freelancing in editing and proofreading as a third job). But the challenge I have set for myself is at least one per week.

The other resolved resolution was writing more creative fiction and poetry. My grandmother always said that whatever you do on New Year's Day, you will do for the rest of the year. So I worked on and completed a poem from my Priority WIP poem list (more on that in another post). I also started, but didn't finish, a new poem and some future blog posts.

Today, I will begin fulfilling another of my goals for the year. I will choose a book on writing and editng craft from the five I picked out from my collection of books on craft that I was either given or bought, but haven't yet read. Everyday, I plan to read a chapter or two from each of the five books. Today, I have chosen to read the first chapter of a book that has been on my shelf since shortly after I moved into my current apartment four years ago. Revision and Self-Editing is written by James Scott Bell and published by Writer's Digest Press. I think I got it for some ridiculously low price when I subscribed to Writer's Digest.

There are also some upgrades to my resolutions. I intend to seek out opportunities for beginning my editing and proofreading career. I hope to save enough money to be able to have my first paying issue of The Were-Travler (information, here). I am hoping to soon sign on to a monthly membership of the gym at the high-rise office building where my new office at the public media company will be located. I want to keep losing weight and feel better. I plan on a long long overdue visit at the dentist (as soon as I get some decent dental insurance) and do something about these awful broken and painful teeth of mine.

That's it, folks. Just a few excited lines of success in the first week of the new year. I am hoping to receive some long awaited news about some poetry and fiction submissions made in the past. A nice acceptance email would be a great harbinger of 2017. I would blog about that, for sure.

I hope your pursuits will all be successful as well.

Peace--

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The Hard Waiting Time Game

3/22/2016

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When you write stories and poems, write and actually submit them to magazines and anthologies, that takes a hell of a lot of nerve. Super-thick steel coated ones, if you get my drift. But submitting your work is easy peasy compared to what you go through after.

Next comes the Hard Waiting Time Game.

I have been waiting for news on five poetry submissions for over 130 days. I know that's long without sending a query, but at the time of submitting to this journal I read on their guidelines that it could take up to 4 months before hearing from them. I keep checking my Submittable account and it still says "In Progress" so I'm not going to sweat that one just yet.

In the meantime, I should be hearing back in a few weeks about a major submission of a flash story to a well-known publication. I sent them my flash story "The ABC's of the Apocalypse" awhile back and got the news a month ago that the story made it through their first round of reading and was kicked up to the editor. The email said to expect a wait time (Hard Waiting Time Game Level 2) of about 8 weeks, so I should be hearing something about this one over the next week or so.

I have other submissions in elsewhere and looking to put some more through over the Easter weekend.

Just like gamblers say, especially about the lottery: "You can't win if you don't play," this modified adage holds true for writers: "You can't get published if you don't send it in." And I would add that you need to be patient. Getting published is a waiting game. Write, submit, be patient, and persevere.

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M. X. Kelly

Writing, Publishing, Editing and Life in 2022

2021 Accomplishments: Life, Research, Writing, Self-Publishing, Etcetera...

Two New Poems to be Published in Scifaikufest & a Publication that Fell Through & a New Story in the Works

Planning a Poetry Book for November Scrivener Project

Poems Published in the 2017 Winter Issue of Star*Line...

RESOLVED! 2 for 1/2! Plus Upgrades

The Hard Waiting Time Game

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