Archive for the ‘Viable Paradise’ Category

I wanted to wait until I had the certificate in hand

Posted in Short Stories, Viable Paradise, Writing on March 31, 2011 | 10 Comments »

But I just can’t.

I found out today, my story, “A Simple Wager” was given honorable mention in the Writers of the Future contest for Q1.  While this is not winning the Kentucky Derby, it is the first prize I have received for my writing.  It is a tremendous feeling of validation which I am grateful for.

For those who are wondering, I wrote this story at Viable Paradise XIV.  I am tremendously excited to have won my first award.  I am going to keep entering.

Next up, Finalist…

Did I mention I am really happy?

-Seamus (is happy)

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It’s the hour of the wolf and I don’t want to die…

Posted in Catch as Catch Can, Daye Jobbery, Paradise Lost, Viable Paradise, Writing Process on February 3, 2011 | 1 Comment »

Greetings,

What have I been doing you ask?  Well let me tell you, one of the things you can guess quiet easily.  I have been a very naughty blogger, in that I simply have not been doing it.  But before I get off on a rant, lets stick with the format at hand.

What has passed since last we spoke:

1.  I continue the onerous process of revising, editing and fiddling with The Gears of the Earth.  It has been painful and educational in the extreme.  It has also been disheartening because the book is rather large and feels like an endless hole into which I pour hours of time trying to make it shine.  The realization that I am trying to turn a natural gift for story telling into something special using a mediocre skill at the written word is a tough lesson for my ego.  That being said there is a story in there that people will love, that I love and I want to see it shine through the pressed pages of pulp wood into your mind.

2.  Hunting.  Many of you know by now I am a hunter.  Well it turns out hunting seems to fulfill and also renew certain aspects of my creativity, but it also basically unplugs my creative process.  I have noticed this two years running now that I simply am a pitiful writer in November and December.

3.  The holidays.  I have two young children, a boy and a girl who are 7 years of age.  Yes, twins.  It seems common enough, both Ken Scholes and Saladin Ahmed have them as well as I recall.  Maybe it comes from sitting and writing so long or something?  Regardless, the holidays have come and passed.  It starts with late October and runs through New Years at my house and it is a hectic time full of sound and fury, signifying consumer whoring of horrifying magnitudes.

4.  Day Jobbery.  Yea and onto life came work: and it was tedious at times. It is also sometimes challenging and fun, and LO it continued to pay for bacon and eggs and mortgages and holidays and so we did not beat out swords into plowshares.   You may or may not know but I am a middle manager in a technology company working in business development.  This is the bastard child born when Sales and Marketing drink too much Chardonay while listening to Lush Life and smoking up the mailroom guys weed.  Mine got incredibly busy and continues to be busy, but I am reaching the point where I am creating the new normal around that.

5.  Short Stories.  I have started a bundle of the suckers but they seem to be more writing exercise than actual story telling because once I have found I proved a point I wanted to make to myself about writing in a certain style I lose intest.  This is in general all together no good bad behavior.  No finished short stories means nothing to share with writer friends and nothing to submit.  Which brings me to the point of self flagellation about getting back on the damn band wagon with submitting.  Say it with me chill’uns, “TILL HEll WONT HAVE IT!”  We should just start a small press company called THWHI and be done with it I tell you.

Seamus you say, “This is some pretty pedestrian wanker shit, what IS shaking down at the  gin joint?”

Well I am glad you asked that, ecstatic really.  Here is what has me jazzed.

With the aid of a fellow Viable Paradise grad, Stephanie Leary,  We have announced a hybrid writing retreat and seminar we like to call Paradise Lost.

We have been thinking for some time that it would be awesome to support continued education for neo-pro level grads who are not over the line yet into the super sekret world of published writers with all their meetings, rites and handshakes and such.  Don’t bother asking Overlord Scalzitron, he won’t budge.

We were lucky enough that Jay Lake was feeling gracious and agreed to attend as our writer in residence, which is awesome.

We announced at the end of January and it promptly filled up with only a few spots left.  Color me surprised, I guess there was pent up demand for Texas events?  Either way I am really excited and looking forward to it.

What else is going on?  Aren’t you a struggling writer or some other overly emo, self imposed title?

Well I continue to pound on “Gears” like a tent stake in hard ground, though not nightly at this point.  I am also aware that of a very irreverent paranormal novella lurking under the baseboards of my psyche.  It is not in an outline yet, but it is getting damn close.  In the mean time I am going to start making hay with the stories I have unfinished and get a few done and out for submission.  I have promised myself I will not get to go to Reno this year if I don’t have SOMETHING sold.  I have also been told that my poetry does not stink and I should consider putting it out for submission.  If anyone has any thoughts on good venues who are looking for submissions for poetry I am ALL ears…

In the mean time, here is wishing you good luck out there,

-Seamus

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A Strange Anniversary

Posted in Viable Paradise, Writing on October 14, 2010 | 7 Comments »

Greetings,

On October 14th, 2009 . . . I had an epiphany.

You will need some back story to make sense of this, please play along at home.

Earlier that summer a friend, Dave Wolverton came to dinner at my house while he was in Austin.  Dave and I  met while I was in College at Texas A&M. I met him through Aggiecon and later kept up with him through the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest.  I had harbored aspirations to write professionally at that point in my life.

It had been many years since Dave and I had seen each other in person.  The inevitable question came up, “Have you been writing?” and my answer was sadly,  “Only a little.”  I had garnered a few publishing credits for work in Role Playing games, but nothing of substance. Dave commiserated with the ease a decade can pass and lamented my lack of productivity.

I agreed, it was a pitiable state and said I still had intentions of writing. Dave suggested I attend his Write That Novel two-day workshop he was hosting in Dallas in a few months. I decided that was an excellent idea as it would be a fun way to spend a weekend with the wife in Dallas.

The workshop weekend came and the wife and I attended.  It was an intense and interesting two-day look into how they make sausage in writing craft and the publishing business.  Dave has a practiced hand at breaking down artistic hand waving into the core activities, skills and behaviors which characterize the successful practitioner of this dark art, writing.

On the drive home I was deep in thought about writing.  This is perhaps when the epiphany came.  I had crossed a mental threshold at which the decision to write was still an option.  Subconsciously that liminal event was working out the details, the depth of my commitment.  It was both exhilarating and terrifying. The first step was of course to discuss it with my wife, whom was cautiously but fully supportive of my wish.  I am thankful now, as I was then for her willingness to buy into my dream.

After that it became whirlwind of thought and activity, for which I have spent the last year at the center.  I come here having received a great deal of help from my friends and I am deeply indebted.  This is hardly to say that this last year is in any way an end state.  It is only a milestone on a path I fully suspect I will be metering out the rest of my life.

That being said I do wish to acknowledge the journey.  At this time last year, to the day,  I awoke to my writer life, my Booklife as Jeff Vandermeer might say.  My Mythlife… that life which exists solely in the cosmology of my mind.  In the last year thanks to the help of my friends, my hard work and luck I sit here a graduate of Viable Paradise XIV with over 200k words written in 365 days.  A manuscript in revision, moving towards submission.  A handful of short stories I am proud of and comfort in saying that I am a writer.  A Neophyte, an apprentice, but a writer, none the less.  It is hard to put into words how much they mean to me.  Just to type it and not feel like a fraud is astounding. I have not allowed myself to say them before today, and I must continue to earn that title every day.

In this blog I am going to document the events of the past year. My process of growing into my booklife, my Mythlife and the slow burning fuse that is my experience getting my work published.

For those of who you are Pro’s I welcome suggestions and comments.

For those who share this path with me, walk with me brother and sisters and tell me your stories, your tales, those long yarns and sad fables of your own mythology, as we walk together into the dawn.

Cheers,

Seamus

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