James Beamon posted a link to an old, but very interesting article on rejection by Marion Zimmer Bradley – Why Did My Story Get Rejected?. Well worth a read if your feeling the pain of rejection.

Coincidentally, I got my first rejection of the year today – for Backwards Boy. Not terribly surprising, I think it’s going to be a tricky story to sell.

Not a good day today – hence the late post. I decided to go running this morning but picked a route that was longer and tougher than I should have so the rest of the day has been a bit of a disaster. The only good point so far has been re-reading three stories from Cate Gardner‘s Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits. I was planning on posting a review, but that will have to wait until later in the week.

Luckily, yesterday was a productive day. I finished editing Backwards Boy and submitted it to a website. It came in at 1117 words and I’m pretty happy with it. Unfortunately, the speculative fiction element is very subtle so I think it will be a hard sell. I have another story with the same problem – Hidden and it’s difficult to find anywhere to submit it to.

I also wrote the first of a series of longer blogs I’m calling Meaty Mondays. It’s about my attitude towards self-publishing and will go live tomorrow morning.

And because that wasn’t enough writing, I also wrote the first 643 words of a new story. Its working title is Origami Man and Paperboy but that may well change.

Ethel the Muse was working overtime on Saturday morning and by the time I got up I had a fully formed idea for a new story – Backwards Boy.

The first half was written on Saturday but by Sunday morning I hated it so I ended up rewriting a lot of it.

It’s pretty short – 986 words – and it’s also difficult to categorise. In a lot of ways it’s not really speculative fiction at all. But it might be, it depends on what happens after the story ends. Unfortunately, that means it will be a tricky story to place but we’ll see how it goes. Of course, it needs to sit in my unfinished folder and age for a couple of weeks before I edit it and start submitting.

The addition of Backwards Boy means I have five stories waiting for me to edit them. Can you tell I’m not a fan of editing? My goal is to get all five finished and out into the wild by the end of the year.

Other than a couple of hours of writing, the weekend was filled with day job and trips out and television. Specifically we caught up with the latest four episodes of The Walking Dead, ending with the mid-season finale. Great stuff, particularly the closing scene.

Sunday night we watched Book of Blood - a horror movie based on a couple of Clive Barker stories from his Books of Blood series. We’ve already seen The Midnight Meat Train and were lucky enough to go to the UK premiere of Dread (on our honeymoon) and in both cases we were pleasantly surprised. Similarly, with Book of Blood, I went in with pretty low expectations but it’s pretty well acted, the special effects are…well…effective and there’s some genuinely creepy moments. It’s not a classic movie by any means but if you’re into Clive Barker and/or enjoy haunted house movies then it’s worth a look.