Blurred Line

That's right - a non-depressing excuse for my lack of posting since Sunday. Two things, really. First, Goodbye, Darwin is coming together at an astonishingly fast pace. I can say, with a pretty decent amount of confidence (let's say 75%), that I'll only need as many days as there are fingers on my hands to get the thing complete and sent off to the printer. So, I've been busy coordinating things on that.

Also, I'm moving. In twelve days. It's a little earlier than originally anticipated, but, now that I'm single, staying alone in my bachelor apartment seemed a lot less fun than moving to a place with a roommate that's on one of the most popular streets in the entire city. Seriously, the number of bars within walking distance of my front doorstep will outnumber my dead or dying hair follicles by a significant margin (see picture at left for an illustration of why this translates to: holy crap, that's a lot bars!).

Since I'll be doing a lot of running around between packing, making address changes and doing all that kind of moving type stuff as well as working on the anthology, I'm going to on hiatus from blogging for the remainder of the month. I've been told by my future roomie that the new place already has the net hooked up, so there shouldn't be any problems as far as getting hooked up again goes (but, well, you know how computers can be sometimes). In the meantime, have fun!

One last note. Melly's gone to Israel to be with her family during this crisis. Drop by her blog and let her know we're all hoping that everyone comes through alright.

Before I give the table of contents, I'll just mention that "Learning Magic From Mint" has officially become my toughest sell. I was fortunate enough to sell both "Between Eternities" and "Smoke and Mirrors" on my third attempt. Unfortunately, I got a rejection from Son and Foe today on "Mint", so that's off to another market. Anyhow, here's the TOC, although not in the order they'll be appearing in the book (largely because that hasn't yet been decided). There's also one other story that might be included, but I haven't been able to get in touch with the author yet.

"At An Angle" - Jeremy Benjamin
"Bright Star" - Susan M. Sailors
"The Copy" - David McGillveray
"Fade Away and Radiate" - Justin Stanchfield
"Goodbye, Darwin" - Sam S. Kepfield
"Hard Wonder" - Ian Donnell Arbuckle
"In Media Res Publica" - Trent Roman
"Keeping Vigil at the Tree of Life" - R. Michael Burns
"Requiem for a Runner" - Gwen Perkins
"Phaedra" - Davin Ireland
"Renegade" - Matthew Bowron
"Writer's Block" - Ali Al Saeed

We have a diverse group of writers here, hailing from the United States, England, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and Bahrain. Some are being published for the very first time. Some have a wide variety of publishing credits under their belt. Some have even received honourable mentions in the Year's Best compilatons. I, for one, am extremely excited about the anthology. I'll mention more news as it happens.

My apologies for being entirely inattentive to this blog lately, not to mention those that I usually read on a regular basis. I wasn't in a great headspace, as my relationship ended late last week. That's always a bummer, but this one had lasted four years and, as far as I was concerned, seemed as if it would continue on indefinitely. Anyhow, I spent most of this week dealing with the issue in the most mature way possible: alcohol. I went out with friends a lot and generally tried to take my mind off things. The upside is that now I'm feeling better and my outright misery has settled into a simple depression at the back of my mind. That I can handle, so hopefully I'll get things back on schedule.

This has also meant some bad things for my writing this week. I'm going to try to get some done tomorrow, but I'm never able to be that prolific the first day back on a project after a sustained absence.

Oh, and for those of you who haven't yet signed up with LibraryThing, you should check out this article on it that appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

I'm still waiting around for confirmation from a pair of the authors, so I can't post a table of contents quite yet, but I thought I'd post the submission stats for interested writers out there.

Total Submissions: 89
Total Rejections: 77
Total Acceptances: 12

Now, if you're keeping track, that's a 13% acceptance rate. Add to that the fact that we're only paying ten bucks per story, and you can imagine how tough it is to get accepted at a semi-pro or pro market that's making a more considerable financial investment in your story.

Yup, this writing life's a tough one, alright.

Pending any lost emails or problems of a similar nature, Goodbye, Darwin will finally close to submissions after nearly one year. I've been busy today reading the last of the submissions and sending out rejections and acceptances. Overall, I'm pretty excited about the anthology. I'll have more in a few days - hopefully a finalized table of contents and tentative publication date.

And yes, I do realize that I managed to crash and burn on my very first week of setting a writing goal. Couldn't even do a measly thousand words. I'll get better, promise. I've added what remained of last week's goal to this week's total, just so that I stay on the 1000 word per week pace.

Argh! Much distraction in my personal life as of late. Hopefully I'll have returned to my regularly scheduled posting on Monday.

In the meantime, here are the top 50 personal blogs in the SF&F field (thanks to John Scalzi and Technorati).

Yesterday, Flood was musing about the archaic practice of actual putting pen to paper when writing, among other things. Now, as some of you know, I'm one of the few who still bother to do so (and, ironically, I grew up with a computer at my disposal - make of that what you will). I realize that, although I've mentioned it a few times in comment threads here and elsewhere, I don't believe I've ever actually written a post about why I write that way. So, prepare to be enthralled...

1. I do it is because it's easy. My notebook is portable. My computer is not. Even if I had a laptop, it's still less of a pain to lug a notebook around, and you don't have to worry about batteries or anything like that.

2. I do it because it blocks out distraction. My computer has a lot of bells and whistles. You know, stuff like the internet and games. Really fun stuff. My notebook has paper. Pages upon pages upon pages of blank paper, sneering at me. I'm easily distracted, so the choice for me is clear.

3. I do it because I stare at a computer all day at work.

4. I do it because it's a great way to edit. When I write something on paper, typing it up at some point becomes a necessity. The actual typing of my story has become my first edit. And, unlike when I re-read a story to edit, it's pretty difficult for me to skip over a word or two. Basically, I catch a lot more errors when I'm typing than when I'm reading.

For the voyeuristic - a peek inside (don't pretend it doesn't give you a little thrill).

I've been keeping up with this year's Clarion journals as best I can and I'm really pining after the experience. Sounds like week one with Samuel Delany was a success and everyone seems to be in pretty good spirits. I wish I'd been there this year - and the fact that Tobias Buckell has decided to show up even though he's not technically on the instructer's roster only adds to my yearning.

Anyhow, I finally got around to typing up what I have so far on "Spam". This story centers around Zan, who appeared briefly in "Between Eternities", and the events that take place earlier the same day. Well, technically, the story centers around Sara, an associate of Zan's, who has some past connections to Jake, the lead character in "Between Eternities". I will, at some point, write a third story about that, just because it's fun to connect everything.

You'll also notice that my weekly progress meter is now up, though I have written very much quite yet. You can blame that on my stuffiness, runny nose and constant sneezing, which make it really difficult to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time. I need some more Sudafed.

Much Canada Day fun yesterday. Spent the afternoon lounging by a pool and drinking myself into a stupor before heading downtown for the fireworks and some bar-hopping. It rained pretty hard on the way back, though, so I came home looking like a drowned rat.

Speaking of Canadiana, I thought I'd recommend Vancouver native Douglas Coupland's novel, Hey Nostradamus! I've been wanting to read a Coupland novel for ages and finally got around to it when I saw this book and Microserfs over at BookCloseouts. This novel centers around a high school shooting in 1988 Vancouver and is told in four parts, each centering around a different character in a different year. Part One follows Cheryl in 1988, who narrates the recent events of her life that precede the shooting, in which she is killed. Part Two follows Jason, Cheryl's husband, eleven years after the shooting. Three years after that we look at Heather, the woman who's fallen in love with Jason. And, finally, in 2004, we follow Reg, Jason's ultra-religious father as he reflects on his life. This is an absolutely fabulous novel. Coupland does a fantastic job with his characters and also manages to tackle a lot of interesting religious novels. And, hey, you can even pick up a hardcover copy for $2.


Profile Editor. Writer. 9-5er. Lord of the Dance. Blurredline.com Apodis Publishing Fusion Fragment cterrill(at)blurredline.com Buy Goodbye, Darwin Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format Buy Blurred Line Amazon.com Amazon.ca Chapters.ca Barnes&Noble.com Read it free in PDF Format The Short Stuff "Learning Magic From Mint" - published May 2007 in Atomjack "Between Eternities" - published October 2005 at Speculative.ca "Smoke and Mirrors" - published June 2005 in Byzarium Submissions Log Total Subs: 25 Acceptances: 3 Rejections: 17 Withdrawals: 3 Subs Out: 2 Quality Blogs Scalzi's Whatever Dave's Blogography Bookslut The Struggling Writer SF Signal the0phrastus Paperback Writer Scribe's Writing Desk Nathan Bransford Lyons Literary LLC The World in the Satin Bag Book In The Oven The Word Perhaps We Learned Something... Words, etc. Archives March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 Et Cetera Cavan @ Last.fm Cavan @ LibraryThing Feeds Atom Feed RSS Feed	Wednesday, July 19, 2006 - A Non-Depressing Excuse That's right - a non-depressing excuse for my lack of posting since Sunday. Two things, really. First, Goodbye, Darwin is coming together at an astonishingly fast pace. I can say, with a pretty decent amount of confidence (let's say 75%), that I'll only need as many days as there are fingers on my hands to get the thing complete and sent off to the printer. So, I've been busy coordinating things on that. Also, I'm moving. In twelve days. It's a little earlier than originally anticipated, but, now that I'm single, staying alone in my bachelor apartment seemed a lot less fun than moving to a place with a roommate that's on one of the most popular streets in the entire city. Seriously, the number of bars within walking distance of my front doorstep will outnumber my dead or dying hair follicles by a significant margin (see picture at left for an illustration of why this translates to: holy crap, that's a lot bars!). Since I'll be doing a lot of running around between packing, making address changes and doing all that kind of moving type stuff as well as working on the anthology, I'm going to on hiatus from blogging for the remainder of the month. I've been told by my future roomie that the new place already has the net hooked up, so there shouldn't be any problems as far as getting hooked up again goes (but, well, you know how computers can be sometimes). In the meantime, have fun! One last note. Melly's gone to Israel to be with her family during this crisis. Drop by her blog and let her know we're all hoping that everyone comes through alright. Cavan blogged at 4:35 PM \| 1 comments Sunday, July 16, 2006 - Goodbye, Darwin TOC Before I give the table of contents, I'll just mention that "Learning Magic From Mint" has officially become my toughest sell. I was fortunate enough to sell both "Between Eternities" and "Smoke and Mirrors" on my third attempt. Unfortunately, I got a rejection from Son and Foe today on "Mint", so that's off to another market. Anyhow, here's the TOC, although not in the order they'll be appearing in the book (largely because that hasn't yet been decided). There's also one other story that might be included, but I haven't been able to get in touch with the author yet. "At An Angle" - Jeremy Benjamin "Bright Star" - Susan M. Sailors "The Copy" - David McGillveray "Fade Away and Radiate" - Justin Stanchfield "Goodbye, Darwin" - Sam S. Kepfield "Hard Wonder" - Ian Donnell Arbuckle "In Media Res Publica" - Trent Roman "Keeping Vigil at the Tree of Life" - R. Michael Burns "Requiem for a Runner" - Gwen Perkins "Phaedra" - Davin Ireland "Renegade" - Matthew Bowron "Writer's Block" - Ali Al Saeed We have a diverse group of writers here, hailing from the United States, England, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Netherlands and Bahrain. Some are being published for the very first time. Some have a wide variety of publishing credits under their belt. Some have even received honourable mentions in the Year's Best compilatons. I, for one, am extremely excited about the anthology. I'll mention more news as it happens. Cavan blogged at 8:10 PM \| 2 comments Saturday, July 15, 2006 - I'm Back My apologies for being entirely inattentive to this blog lately, not to mention those that I usually read on a regular basis. I wasn't in a great headspace, as my relationship ended late last week. That's always a bummer, but this one had lasted four years and, as far as I was concerned, seemed as if it would continue on indefinitely. Anyhow, I spent most of this week dealing with the issue in the most mature way possible: alcohol. I went out with friends a lot and generally tried to take my mind off things. The upside is that now I'm feeling better and my outright misery has settled into a simple depression at the back of my mind. That I can handle, so hopefully I'll get things back on schedule. This has also meant some bad things for my writing this week. I'm going to try to get some done tomorrow, but I'm never able to be that prolific the first day back on a project after a sustained absence. Oh, and for those of you who haven't yet signed up with LibraryThing, you should check out this article on it that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Cavan blogged at 7:21 PM \| 0 comments Wednesday, July 12, 2006 - Submission Stats I'm still waiting around for confirmation from a pair of the authors, so I can't post a table of contents quite yet, but I thought I'd post the submission stats for interested writers out there. Total Submissions: 89 Total Rejections: 77 Total Acceptances: 12 Now, if you're keeping track, that's a 13% acceptance rate. Add to that the fact that we're only paying ten bucks per story, and you can imagine how tough it is to get accepted at a semi-pro or pro market that's making a more considerable financial investment in your story. Yup, this writing life's a tough one, alright. Cavan blogged at 6:13 PM \| 0 comments Monday, July 10, 2006 - Goodbye, Darwin Wraps Pending any lost emails or problems of a similar nature, Goodbye, Darwin will finally close to submissions after nearly one year. I've been busy today reading the last of the submissions and sending out rejections and acceptances. Overall, I'm pretty excited about the anthology. I'll have more in a few days - hopefully a finalized table of contents and tentative publication date. And yes, I do realize that I managed to crash and burn on my very first week of setting a writing goal. Couldn't even do a measly thousand words. I'll get better, promise. I've added what remained of last week's goal to this week's total, just so that I stay on the 1000 word per week pace. Cavan blogged at 1:51 PM \| 4 comments Saturday, July 08, 2006 - Distraction! Argh! Much distraction in my personal life as of late. Hopefully I'll have returned to my regularly scheduled posting on Monday. In the meantime, here are the top 50 personal blogs in the SF&F field (thanks to John Scalzi and Technorati). Cavan blogged at 4:59 PM \| 0 comments Wednesday, July 05, 2006 - Pen to Paper Yesterday, Flood was musing about the archaic practice of actual putting pen to paper when writing, among other things. Now, as some of you know, I'm one of the few who still bother to do so (and, ironically, I grew up with a computer at my disposal - make of that what you will). I realize that, although I've mentioned it a few times in comment threads here and elsewhere, I don't believe I've ever actually written a post about why I write that way. So, prepare to be enthralled... 1. I do it is because it's easy. My notebook is portable. My computer is not. Even if I had a laptop, it's still less of a pain to lug a notebook around, and you don't have to worry about batteries or anything like that. 2. I do it because it blocks out distraction. My computer has a lot of bells and whistles. You know, stuff like the internet and games. Really fun stuff. My notebook has paper. Pages upon pages upon pages of blank paper, sneering at me. I'm easily distracted, so the choice for me is clear. 3. I do it because I stare at a computer all day at work. 4. I do it because it's a great way to edit. When I write something on paper, typing it up at some point becomes a necessity. The actual typing of my story has become my first edit. And, unlike when I re-read a story to edit, it's pretty difficult for me to skip over a word or two. Basically, I catch a lot more errors when I'm typing than when I'm reading. For the voyeuristic - a peek inside (don't pretend it doesn't give you a little thrill). Cavan blogged at 4:38 PM \| 4 comments Monday, July 03, 2006 - Pining I've been keeping up with this year's Clarion journals as best I can and I'm really pining after the experience. Sounds like week one with Samuel Delany was a success and everyone seems to be in pretty good spirits. I wish I'd been there this year - and the fact that Tobias Buckell has decided to show up even though he's not technically on the instructer's roster only adds to my yearning. Anyhow, I finally got around to typing up what I have so far on "Spam". This story centers around Zan, who appeared briefly in "Between Eternities", and the events that take place earlier the same day. Well, technically, the story centers around Sara, an associate of Zan's, who has some past connections to Jake, the lead character in "Between Eternities". I will, at some point, write a third story about that, just because it's fun to connect everything. You'll also notice that my weekly progress meter is now up, though I have written very much quite yet. You can blame that on my stuffiness, runny nose and constant sneezing, which make it really difficult to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time. I need some more Sudafed. Cavan blogged at 8:52 PM \| 0 comments Sunday, July 02, 2006 - Hey Nostradamus! Much Canada Day fun yesterday. Spent the afternoon lounging by a pool and drinking myself into a stupor before heading downtown for the fireworks and some bar-hopping. It rained pretty hard on the way back, though, so I came home looking like a drowned rat. Speaking of Canadiana, I thought I'd recommend Vancouver native Douglas Coupland's novel, Hey Nostradamus! I've been wanting to read a Coupland novel for ages and finally got around to it when I saw this book and Microserfs over at BookCloseouts. This novel centers around a high school shooting in 1988 Vancouver and is told in four parts, each centering around a different character in a different year. Part One follows Cheryl in 1988, who narrates the recent events of her life that precede the shooting, in which she is killed. Part Two follows Jason, Cheryl's husband, eleven years after the shooting. Three years after that we look at Heather, the woman who's fallen in love with Jason. And, finally, in 2004, we follow Reg, Jason's ultra-religious father as he reflects on his life. This is an absolutely fabulous novel. Coupland does a fantastic job with his characters and also manages to tackle a lot of interesting religious novels. And, hey, you can even pick up a hardcover copy for $2. Cavan blogged at 4:10 PM \| 0 comments	Progress Zilch! 0/0 Listening A.J. Croce - "Maybe I'm Amazed" My Music Reading Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerney My Library Watching Black Book: B Sweet and Lowdown: C Breakfast on Pluto: B Wishlist Bridge of Sighs - Richard Russo Rachael Yamagata - Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart