Caroline M. Yoachim

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Fantasy Magazine is running a wonderful holiday subscription special. Here are the details:

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This is a first for us, but we’re now offering an online holiday special for Fantasy Magazine, both for US and overseas subscriptions, which boils down to ten dollars and thirty dollars, respectively, for four issues.

US: http://wildsidepress.3dcartstores.com/Fantasy-Magazine-4-issue-US-subscription-HOLIDAY-SPECIAL_p_21-38.html

Overseas: http://wildsidepress.3dcartstores.com/Fantasy-Magazine-4-issue-international-subscription-HOLIDAY-SPECIAL_p_35-45.html

Please spread the good word or gift a subscription to friends and family; or try out a magazine that we all feel very strongly about, and that we hope that readers will agree, once they’ve gotten alook at and …

The Basics, Revisited

Back when I first started writing, I spent a fair amount of time looking through ‘how to write’ books (most useful for me being Sol Stein’s “On Writing”). Lately, while I’ve been happy with my stories on a word by word level, I haven’t been as thrilled with the bigger structure of the stories. So I decided it was time to have another look at some of the technique books to see if I can glean new insights from them now that I’ve had a bit more practical experience.

My focus-of-the-moment is to look for ways to make the words …

Submission #14

Encouraged by my recent sale, I did another pass of revisions on my giant spider story and sent it off to Strange Horizons.

:: fingers crossed ::

Sale #1

Well, my first Clarion story, “Tending the Mori Birds” was rejected at Clarkesworld, but I turned it around for a quick sale to Fantasy Magazine! It’s my very first sale, so of course I spent much of this past weekend celebrating (having heard on Friday that the story was accepted). And, as proof that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing: http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/87419.html.

Too jumpy for my own good….

(Or, “Why I shouldn’t drink a bunch of coffee and then sit at home by myself writing stories about corpses during a rainstorm”)

I’m up to 3,300 words on my corpse photography story, which is probably a bit past the halfway mark. I was making excellent progress on it this morning until a gust of wind blew pounding rain into my window right as a dead woman was sneaking up behind one of my characters. Let’s just say I’m a bit jumpy today, and leave it at that. I did manage not to spill my coffee (mainly due to the …

Brrr!

Woke up this morning and noticed that the hummingbird feeder on the porch was frozen solid. I think it got down to 20 degrees last night. Of course, my first thought this morning was – excellent, I’ll go out and take pictures of frosty autumn leaves! Which I did. I think my hands are frozen since I stubbornly refuse to wear gloves while taking pictures (makes the camera harder to handle).

But now I’m back inside with a hot cup of coffee, feeling much warmer and quite …

Write-in wrap-up

Well, I wrote about 2.5k words this weekend to finish off the not-so-alternate-history story that has been plaguing me for several weeks now. I’m thrilled to have it hammered out–it kept trying to turn into a novel, but I showed it who was boss. Now all I have to do is tidy it up a bit and then I can start collecting crits on it!

Flickr Addictd

I’m officially a Flickr junkie–I caved and payed for a full-featured account. The ever-so-smart people who designed the site rate the photos on a random mishmash of things (how many times it’s been viewed, comments, who calls it a favorite) to give it an ‘interestingness’ score. Competitive person that I am, I want my photos to get recognized as ‘interesting.’ So I spend way too much time finding groups in which to display said photos. That and I like to look at all the purdy pictures other people are posting. The whole thing is highly addictive. But it’s relatively harmless …

Fire!

One cool thing about hanging out with physics/astronomy grad students is that they have some fun toys. For instance, the party I just got invited to will have a Ruben’s Tube.

Music AND Fire. How cool is that?

Submission #12 and more new words

I’m eligible for Clarkesworld again (can’t submit for seven days after a reject), so I sent another one their way. I’m hoping that Nick will like bloody-throated birds better than giant spiders.

My not-so-alternate-history story continues to grow at a steady pace, I’m up to 3000 words now. This is the point at which it has fallen apart before, but I give myself permission to write the rest as complete crap if necessary, just to get it done. I’m also trying to resist the urge to start over and tweak the beginning–this is what got me into trouble the first …