So, the semester is finally over and I am free for the summer.

This means two things: 1) I can work more hours at my job, (so much for that summer break shit.) – and – 2) I can get back to working on my writing projects.

Regarding my writing projects…

…I think I mentioned, way back when I started this blog, that if I did not have an agent by now, and if I had not had any interest from publishers, that I would start putting the first novel up on the site, perhaps a chapter at a time, for free.

Sorry to tell you, oh my faithful readers, that none of those things is the case just now.

Back in December, Angry Robot Books, the publishing company that published Lavie Tidhar’s (you can check out his blog here: http://lavietidhar.wordpress.com ) excellent series including “The Bookman” and “Camera Obscura”, had an open call for unagented and unsolicited manuscripts. There was no way I could pass that up. So, I sent in my proposal/ synopsis and the sample of my novel. Now, I still haven’t heard back from them, one way or the other yet, but I really don’t expect to until sometime in June.

By the way, it’d be a hell of a birthday present to get a full manuscript request. Just saying…

…Anyways, they get an exclusive look at it until they decide to reject it. Which is fine with me, but it means I haven’t been able to query any more agents, and I won’t be able to start posting chapters here, at least, not for a while yet.

I’m thinking, if I get a rejection from Angry Robot Books, that I’ll start sending out queries again, for couple of months anyway. After that, Drawn to Flame will probably start showing up here. That is, of course, if I haven’t saved up enough cash to hire a professional freelance editor. If I have, I’ll go that route, then probably work on self publishing in e-book format.

Either way, I’ll keep posting here so that any and all who may be interested can keep reading whatever crazed thing escapes from my head and infiltrates the digital domain.

I have found that, while school is in session, writing long form, novel length stuff is nigh on impossible with all the other things I have to concentrate on. But I keep writing short fiction.

Annnd that’s how you know you’re supposed to be a writer; if in the midst of writing something like 1-2 essays a week for college courses, you find yourself losing sleep, or missing out on time at the bar to camp out with a pad and pen and scribble out some new story, then well, you have to face the fact that you might just be a writer.

And that’s what happens to me. About the most energy I can devote to novel length stuff comes in the form of character sketches and notes, but short stories I bang out in anywhere from a 4-5 hours to a couple of days. Then I let them sit; basically forgetting about them. Then I give them the editing eye, which is about as ominous as it sounds.

To that end, I have a cache of short stories that I can post here. I’ve tried, without luck to sell most of them. So far, I’ve only received rejections, but they have been, for the most part, positive rejections, which means at least I caught someone’s attention and engaged some editors. My bank account wishes it was more than that, but hell, it is what it is.

These are good stories. I believe in them, and my first readers have enjoyed them all. It’s distinctly possible that what I write just isn’t what paying magazine editors are looking for.

(This would not surprise me as I have had terrible timing for the entirety of my life. I have long since learned to laugh at it, but it still seems to be the truth of my experience.)

So, I see it as a serious option to give those stories another polish – grammatical errors will always seem to slip past even the most conscientious reader – and put them up here, from time to time. Maybe I’ll see if there’s some kind of PayPal donation button I can rig up, in case anyone likes them enough to give me money.

Anyways, thoughts for the future and things I don’t quite have figured out yet.

And don’t worry, I’ll still be here, posting about other things and occasionally foaming at the mouth.

It was nice chatting with you again.

We should do this more often.