Happy Halloween - Counting Down

First off - HAPPY HALLOWEEN. 'Tis the season to be...Miserable. Muahaha. I have a tub full of chocolates and sweeties for me Trick or Treaters and my fingers are poised to begin work on

NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow, and look at the folk amassed at my desk who are eager to cheer me on.

Spooky

Simon Marshall Jones has announced the line-up for the initial chapbooks to be published by Spectral Press.

What They Hear in the Dark, by Gary McMahon (April/May 2011)
The Abolisher of Roses, by Gary Fry (September 2011)
Nowhere Hall, by Cate Gardner (January 2012)

Gulp!

Subscriptions for the first year (all three chapbooks) will open shortly (more details on Simon's blog). I imagine as Mr McMahon and Mr Fry are involved, sales should be pretty healthy.

Excited.

WIP Wednesday - It's that Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Forty-One Scenes plotted. A beginning, a middle and an end. Character photos pinned to my memo board. Distracting stories removed from part of the Jingle Bell line and filed away. NaNoWriMo you are cleared for take-off.

I Heart Vampires (That Bite)

As part of Gef Fox's monster movie marathon week, I have a post over at his blog. Later in the week, you'll find posts from Aaron Polson and Lisa Mannetti. Their posts will not be as inane as mine... I hope.

Okay, time to consume some chocolate, it's been a naff day and I'm still at work (shush, don't tell the boss, I'm here). In the words of Willy Wonka, 'So much time, and so little to do! Strike that, reverse it.' Six days (including today) until NaNoWriMo and counting...

Stars and Stripes

Listed a new competition on my Strange Men site yesterday - this one is more of a thank you to everyone who's bought the book. So if you've purchased the book send an email to catephoenix@gmail.com before November 30th 2010 and I'll enter you in the competition. Full details at the Strange Men site.

It will also probably (never say never) be my last competition for the book. Been fun though.

Again, thank you to everyone who bought Strange Men. Very much appreciated. Oh, and I guess I should thank Pret A Manger who have obviously taken out a subliminal messaging campaign on my behalf. Ahem! And hey, they think you're all stars too.

I used to be a Clown



Do I have the coolest brother? Look what he sketched for me. Of course, having made its appearance at a family get-together, the poor Strange Man above suffered much ribbing. I mean... He's obviously lost a bit of weight recently, why else would he need to grip onto his pants?

Sorry, one needs to be evil to ones brother at least once a day - 'tis in the contract.

And to be fair, he'd already attacked me. Observe...

Bro: Read one of your stories online... Strange Tooth. Impressed. Reminded me of a Twilight Zone episode.

Me: Wow, you actually read one of my stories. (Jaw flaps open).

Bro: I thought, she's good and then I read another one (shan't mention here to save the story's blushes) about (blah) and (blah).

Mum: Have I read that one?

Bro: Wouldn't bother, Mum. I mean WTF!!!

Still, I'll begrudgingly add, he can draw and I cannot.

Bite Me

Sometimes, the internet rocks. Okay, most of the time, the internet rocks. Knowing Joshua Reynolds' book 'Dracula Lives' was forthcoming this month from Pulpwork Press, I thought I'd hold a little Dracula party on my blog. Get out those fake vampire teeth and party.  We're having Doritos...

and we've got beer...

To add to the fun the 'batty' Mr. Reynolds sent me a PDF of his book. Sometimes I think I'm a lucky fish. I'm still going to buy the real thing though and the follow up. Yep, I believe there'll be another Dracula story--which I discovered to my delight when I reached the end of the book. I am in awe of Joshua's mastery of action scenes. There's not a dull moment in the book.

For an extra helping of Dracula, check out Joshua's blog. It's party central there.

MeFail

I'm wilting under a self-imposed ban to stay away from twitter until the weekend. My head is mostly buried in Nowhere Hall and I should be able to send the story scurrying to its intended market this weekend. Then, I guess I need to find anthology guidelines that are buried under a pile of mess and perhaps set my brain to thinking what the heck to write about for those.

Anyway, because I'm not ready to join Twitter Anonymous, here are the tweets I would have tweeted if I was on twitter...

=Sod Twitter Anonymous, I need to join Amazon Rank checker anonymous.
=I think I'm allergic to my butterfly necklace. This makes me sad. I think I'll continue to scratch until my skin tears off.
=Pitting a headless red jelly baby against a yellow one instead of writing… I mean, while I work out a plot point.
=My family have Rudolph noses. Thinking of sealing myself in a bubble. The house keeps shaking with their sneezes.
=My colleague leaves next week to work in DUBAI. She'll travel all over the world. Me, I'll continue to shuffle from scanner to computer.
=I'm in trouble. Haven't sorted out my nephew's wedding photos for mum yet. It'll be their 1st anniversary before I get to it.
=wish I was here :D

Of course there are no @replies. I do like to @reply, I'm especially fond of @reply cheekiness.

Happy Days

RIP Tom Bosley

Thanks for making a 1970s kid giggle

Twelve Lousy Days

Twelve days until NaNoWriMo. Twelve lousy days. I am the definition of panic.

Still working on my covered in red scrawl story. I have 3,000 words licked with another 4,000 to be prettied. Of course, the previous 3,000 will go through further surgery before I release it. So, no I didn't complete my edits at the weekend. I worked hard though and I have a title I somewhat like - Nowhere Hall.

As for the aformentioned NaNoWriMo, I decided this morning that the project is too big for me. It's not labelled 'mad escapade' for fun. Well, okay it was, but now it's seeming like a mad escapade in its entirety. I want to set part of it in the 1920s, I really do. And I meant to do lots of pretty 1920s research, but I haven't. I wandered around Waterstones last month and couldn't find one 1920s related book - god bless Amazon. Not that I ordered any from Amazon either. If this blog was twitter I'd be hashtagging #mefail. I'm considering changing the 1920s portion to the 1970s because, I was alive then and sort of remember it. Crap, did I just admit to that on the web. Of course, that would still require some 1970s research and I need to write how many words a day during November?

Okay, breathe...

In the bath this morning - best thinking always occurs there - I decided I should go for my other novel idea instead. I have a title, characters and an idea that I think is awesome (but then I would)... Of course I have no plans worked out at all for that book, and my other, The Museum of Impossible Artefacts, does at least have 14,000 ish words of notes.

Is it December yet?

I see Red Things

This is my weekend. This pretty pile of paper. Draft two of a story with ugly sentences in red and notes on things to fix in the margins. By the end of Sunday, I want to have almost no red and most of the comment boxes deleted.

I need this story out the door by next week so I can concentrate on finalising my NaNoWriMo plans. Walter (my dictaphone) is also holding three stories for me--one most definitely pants, one WTF, and one shiver-down-my-spine-creepy. I'd also like to edit one or two of the stories on my jingle bell line before hibernating in my new book. Ooh, new book. Excited now. Excited is so much better than overwhelmed.

In pretty news, Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits is now available to buy at Amazon.com - treble the excitement. I expect to be a millionaire by next week. In the ranking sense that is. My book's rank started (okay, first time I checked in) at 97,677, and has steadily dropped to 153,853 during the day. Boy, those guys sell a lot of books. That's 60,000ish shifted in about 7 hours. Bloody hell. Of course, I might be getting the math totally wrong, but still, they're mega busy and that's good for us right. People are buying books. Now I need to torture people into buying mine.

Something is wrong with that last sentence.

Strange Purchase

Strange Men in Pinstripe Suits is now available to purchase over at the Strange Publications website and will be available at Amazon.com and other fine online bookstores soon.

Pre-orders will also dispatch soon so keep checking your mailbox.

In the meantime, here's a trailer of the book:

National Novel Pantsing Month

Three weeks to go and already I'm hyperventalating.

Okay, maybe only a little. But I was so cocky in August when I decided I was going to do NaNoWriMo this year and I was already working on my plan and now it's almost here and....argh!!!

So much to do between now and then, and one of them is a spectaular book trailer for Strange Men... We may remove the word spectacular once it's done. In fact, we will definitely remove the tag once it's done. I think my boys should dress up in their wedding suits and allow me to draw chalk lines down the fabric and take photographs of them in ridiculous poses. Okay, back to my box of old photographs so that I can abuse long-dead relatives instead.

Works (Once) in Progress Wednesday

Hadley Rille Books are five years old and to celebrate they're hosting a contest and you could win an Amazon Kindle 3G. All you have to do is sign up for their newsletter. Plus if you buy any of their books direct from the publisher between now and December you get an extra entry for each book.

I just picked up 'Sweet Potato Pie and Other Surrealities' by Lawrence M. Shoen via Amazon - I know, I know, I lost out on my entry, but I don't suppose a future Hadley Rille author (that's me - yay) can or possibly should enter to win the Kindle. Oh, and I'm sure you'll agree that not many covers outclass Camille Alexa's 'Push of the Sky'.

And Hadley Rille are not the only independent publishers offering amazing deals at the moment. Morrigan Books are hosting a variety of sales this month - the current is for Dead Souls. I may already have that on my shelf. Ahem! And check out PS Publishing's FantasyCon releases sale - fantastic. Erm, I maybe have a story in that little lot. I've ordered myself Rio Youer's End Times, Gary Fry's The House of Canted Steps, Catastrophia, and The Company He Keeps (an extra copy for me to lick).

I fear my collection of wallet moths are going to starve.

My Kingdom for a Meme

The wonderful Kara tagged me and thus I bring you the below meme.

1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have? Why?

Aside from the superpowers I already have (which must remain top secret), I would love to be able to swim. What do you mean that's not a superpower? It is to me. Of course, I don't want to just swim goldfish-like around a swimming pool; I want to head out into the ocean.

2. Who is your style icon?

My niece - I want braids. I want to be able to stick gold stars to my face. I want to wear feathers in my hair when I go to the shops. I want to wear clothes that don't necessarily go together and still manage to look eccentric-cool.

3. What is your favorite quote?

"It's not the bang that terrifies but the anticipation of it." Alfred Hitchcock. Actually, I'm boring myself quoting that--I quote it everywhere.


I'm rather fond of singing saying, "The sun will come out tomorrow."

4. What is the best compliment you’ve ever received?

"You're weird."

5. What playlist/CD is in your CD player/iPod right now?

Erm…I don't know. Something cool and modern I'm sure. Not Abba. Not The Carpenters. Not…



6. Are you a night owl or a morning person?

Oh mornings, definitely. I ache to stay up all night and write (or play on the internet/watch movies), but the truth is, I'm better at 5:30 in the morning.

7. Do you prefer dogs or cats?

Chameleon's

8. What is the meaning behind your blog name?

It's my name… duh! Though originally it was called The Poisoned Apple after the book I was writing and because I love (twisted) fairy tales.

The Spectre of October News

In my last blog post, I hinted at a super sekrit project. The super sekrit is still super but not so secret.

Simon Marshall Jones has announced that I along with - oh my goodness, wait for this list of names - Gary McMahon, Gary Fry, Simon Kurt Unsworth, Simon Bestwick, Steve Lockley, Willie Meikle, Thana Niveau, Alison Littlewood, Mark West, RB Russell, Nicholas Royle and Johnny Mains - will all have chapbooks forthcoming with his new imprint, Spectral Press.

I'm super excited.

And this will be my second chapbook, and my fourth (huh!) little book just by me. I'm slowly filling my bookshelf shadows.

Accountable to September

A few blog posts back, I promised I'd return to making myself accountable for what I had (or hadn't) achieved the previous month. So here goes...

I completed my #10bythen submissions by subbing to: Lightspeed, The Vandermeer's Thacker T Lambshead project, The Zombie Feed, IGMS, Clarkesworld, Shimmer, Poe Little Thing, Ideomancer, Brain Harvest, Moon Milk Review, Fantastique Unfettered and Shock Totem.

Pre-planning my mad escapade novel/novella - 10,867 words

Of the above submissions 3 were stories completed this month: Six Feet Above (2300 words), The Quiet of the Hour Glass (500 words), Name Carved on Empty Space (750 words).

With some thanks to Walter (my dictaphone), I completed the following stories which are awaiting redrafting/editing/help from the beyond: Broken Spokes of an Umbrella Sky (1339 words), Fractured Divide between Him, Her, Them (627 words), unnamed spooky story (3518 - draft in progress), In the Middle of Nowhere, Just Left of 1974 (1159 words), If... (1568 words), Lost Shoes (1034 words), Ash in his Lungs, Dust in his Belly (my mailbox man story that isn't quite working out - yet - a pathetic 319 words).

Other delightful things September brought - I finished up a blurb for a book of awesomeness and I became involved in an awesome super sekrit project.

Holding myself accountable wasn't so scary after all.