Happy New Year, everyone.  Didn’t make nearly as many posts as I’d hoped to last year, but hope springs eternal.  2011 is starting up well; I’ve got some stories out making the rounds, and the patient-education book is almost complete despite some recent snafus.  Here’s hoping everyone has a happy and productive year.

For the past two years I’ve been working on a patient education book about the infectious disease I suffered from during 2008 and 2009.  I’m excited to report that the book is getting close to being finished, and we’re actually in the layout stage.  Our illustrator is fantastic and the book is really starting to look wonderful.  I’m hoping (crosses fingers) that we’ll be publishing in January of ’11.  Check back here for more news in the coming weeks.

Slowly but surely I’m getting to something that should have been done years ago: building up the “stories” page of this site.  I haven’t published a ton, but if I got it into print or pixels, you’ll find it there, as well as links to where you can get the story for your reading pleasure.  Just follow the stories link up top to get there.

Haven’t posted in quite a while, mostly for lack of new information.  Didn’t win the contest I submitted to.  Didn’t hear from any of the venues I’ve got stories out to.  Got the crap kicked out of one of my favorite stories by my writers group.  Guess I’ll be putting that one back under the knife…

It seems relatively common in the writing world to get good news tempered with bad.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve opened an e-mail with a wonderful acceptance only to have the next e-mail be a rejection.  Better than two crappy e-mails, I suppose.  Today’s karmic balance:  Good news from James Roy Daley over at http://booksofthedead.blogspot.com/, he wants to publish “America’s Farmlands Under Assault” in his Best New Zombie Tales series.  The bad news from Susurrus press, who are killing their Chicago Overcoat anthology that was set to feature my novella, “The Killing Page.”  Anyone who’s tried to place a novella in this crap-tastic speculative fiction market will tell you that this is a painful blow.  ”Killing Page” is a great story, one of my best (in my humble estimation) but its 10,000+ word length makes it almost impossible to place.

Sigh and damn you, Fickle Gods of Fiction.

I’ve started to fill in the stories page (link up top) with my bibliography. In the coming days I’ll hopefully create a more detailed page for each story. Of course, I recall saying something similar six months ago…

Sent two stories out today, one to a contest (I know, I know, it’s a pitiful plea for validation.  I’m so ashamed.), and one to a reprint anthology.  Feels so good to be mailing again!

Many of you will already know this, but for those who don’t, I highly recommend the website Specficworld.com.  Among many other offerings, there’s good fiction to be found there, and one of the better speculative fiction market databases on the web.  There’s a fee of about 12 bucks for a year’s access to the database and a condensed monthly newsletter, but it’s a steal at twice the price for what you get.  The editor, Doyle Wilmoth, does a fantastic job on the site.  For some reason, at the moment, the site is running a little slow, but I expect that will get cleaned up soon.

A couple weeks back I joined a local writer’s group. This is a big decision for writers. Mention the words “writer’s group” to any gaggle of writers and you’ll get reactions ranging from “been there, done that,” to outright dismissal. I’ve personally always been more open to the idea, but just been unable to find the time.

But after a number of months of low productivity and frustrating quality (or lack there of) in what I was producing, I thought it was time for something drastic. So I got on the magical interwebs, and discovered the Pure Fiction League very close by.

I’ve been to two meetings so far, and found them to be a group of polite, caring, supportive people of diverse backgrounds and experience. It will be some more time yet before I work up enough creds to get my own stuff read, but I’m enjoying the time spent talking about writing and critiquing others work. More importantly, I find the time spent just focusing on writing to be reinvigorating for my own work, and I’ve definitely seen a bump in productivity there. I’ll keep you posted on my experience with the group.

Happy New Year all!  Here’s hoping it’s a healthy and productive one for all of us.