Weekly Goals - November 27, 2007

An update on last week's goals...

1. Completed.

A note on the above: It was very satisfying to be able to complete this goal, because the story was nowhere close to being finished on Saturday following Thanksgiving. The next two days, however, were extremely productive, netting around 1200 and 1500 words, respectively...allowing me to complete the first draft.

The goals for this week (easy ones, as a reward for already completing all of my goals for November) are as follows:

1. Complete the plot outline for a new short story, "Demon's Forge."
2. Work through one revision of "Redemption."

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Weekly Goals - November 20, 2007

An update on last week's goals...

1. Completed.
2. Completed.

The goal for this week (only one, being a long holiday weekend) is as follows:

1. Complete the first draft of my new short story, "Redemption.

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Mystery Settings

Apparently, when I changed my settings to turn on word verification, either I accidentally changed the settings to only allow "members of the blog" to comment, or Google changed it for me (I'm voting for the latter). In any case, don't know how many people have tried to comment recently, but it should be fixed now.

Weekly Goals - November 13, 2007

(A day late and a dollar short...)

An update on last week's goals...

1. A new chapter is in work, but hasn't been completed.
2. Completed one section of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.
3. Developed a rough plot for a new story (no title yet).

The goals for this week are as follows:

1. Create and input into the computer one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Complete one section of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

"Reluctant" Heroes

The rest of the world is just now realizing this?
C'mon folks...try to keep up.

Great Fun

As much fun as it is to think your blog is popular with around 70 comments per post (and no, I didn't really believe that to be the case), I've had to turn on the word verification...

I'm pretty sure this latest round of severe attacks is taking advantage of the new "e-mail follow-up comments" fix that Blogger pushed out. Thanks a bunch!

Almost Forgot

"Little White Truths" is now officially published in Issue 33 over at Ray Gun Revival

RGR has been having server issues, so if the above link doesn't work, the owner of the magazine has pushed a backup copy onto his own site. (The link is the line of text just above the Issue 33 cover art)

Crazy 8s

Since I have no idea if this is the way I'm supposed to do it (and Jenna tagged me without proper instructions :-P ), I'll just fake it and pretend it's correct:

8 things I'm passionate about
1. Keeping my wife safe (especially from herself)
2. Writing Aston West novels and short stories
3. Airplanes
4. Good music
5. Family (especially my baby niece and nephew)
6. Football (the American kind)
7. Laughter
8. Keeping the government out of my business

8 things I want to do before I die
1. Get published by a real, honest-to-goodness publisher
2. Visit Europe (preferably without the risk of getting killed in a terrorist attack)
3. Have my stories turned into either a movie or TV series
4. Figure out the meaning of life
5. Convince my cousin that writing is not the means of therapy she thinks it is for me.
6. Have a baby (with my wife...duh)
7. See Publish America go out of business
8. Completely understand why most of my favorite shows were taken off the air.

8 things I say often
1. Cool beans
2. Sucks to be you
3. Sucks to be me
4. Did something die in here?
5. Howdy
6. Are you going to get out of bed today?
7. I think you've had enough sugar, dear
8. Later

8 books I've recently read
1. Eleven on Top
2. Trace
3. Q is for Quarry
4. Who Needs a Hero? (Okay, I was reading it in prep for a rewrite...)
5. Godforsaken
6. The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing
7. The Screenwriter's Bible
8. Schwan's Catalog - August-December 2007 (oops)

8 songs I could listen to over and over
1. Call of Cthulu (Kthulu?)
2. And Justice For All
3. One
4. Orion (I'm a sucker for Metallica instrumentals. Go figure)
5. Ice, Ice, Baby (sue me)
6. You Oughta Know
7. Only
8. Startin' up a Posse

(this one above was actually the only one where I had to pare down the list...)

8 things that attract me to my best friends
1. Honesty
2. Intelligence
3. Being Straight-Forward
4. Humor
5. Morals (some looser than others)
6. The need not to talk every second
7. Keeping in touch
8. Hard-working

8 people I think should do Crazy 8s
1. Laurel
2. Nancy (if she still even has a blog)
3. Joyce
4. Matt (welcome back)
5. Cheryl
6. Trish
7. Alphabeter
8. Frank

Weekly Goals - November 6, 2007

An update on last week's goals...

1. Completed one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Completed the final draft and submitted "Ever Dark" to an e-zine.
(It was rejected, but was re-submitted to another e-zine)

The goals for this week are as follows:

1. Create and input into the computer one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Complete one section of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.
3. Develop a rough plot for a new short story.

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Weekly Goals - October 30, 2007

Tasks were completed this week, but nothing toward my goals from last week.

The goals for this week are as follows:

1. Create and input into the computer one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Complete the final draft and submit my latest Aston West short story "Ever Dark" to one e-zine.

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Acceptance at Last

My latest Aston West short story "Little White Truths" has been accepted by Ray Gun Revival. Check back later for more detail about when it will be published.

Weekly Goals - October 23, 2007

Absolutely nothing got worked this last week, so the goals for this week remain the same:

1. Create and input into the computer two new chapters of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Complete two "sections" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.
3. Submit "Misery in Wallowing" to another e-zine. (waiting on a rejection from RGR on "Little White Truths")

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Weekly Goals - October 16, 2007

An update on last week's goals:

1. Complete the final draft of Little White Truths. [Completed, and submitted to RGR]
2. Input one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory into the computer. [Completed]
3. Complete two "sections" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory. [Completed]

And now for this week's goals:

1. Create and input into the computer two new chapters of Death Brings the Victory.
2. Complete two "sections" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.
3. Submit "Misery in Wallowing" to another e-zine. (waiting on a rejection from RGR on "Little White Truths")

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

Weekly Goals - October 9, 2007

An update on last week's goals:

1. Complete one revision of Little White Truths. [Completed multiple revisions, and the final draft is almost ready to ship out to some outlets]
2. Edit two chapters of Death Brings the Victory. [Completed]
3. Complete the next "section" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory. [Completed]

And now for this week's goals:

1. Complete the final draft of Little White Truths.
2. Input one new chapter of Death Brings the Victory into the computer.
3. Complete two "sections" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.

Aston West
novels
short stories
writing goals

The Murky Pool

For those curious, The Agent Pool is still running...only one contestant thus far has progressed to the second round, which is sad really...

But for grins and giggles, I received a notice today from a recently added contestant

56,000 words is too slim for a novel. You need 85-100K. So I’m going to pass.

Which is especially interesting, considering the contestant who progressed to the second round had no issue (as far as I know) with the low word count...

Go figure.

Aston West
agents

Weekly Goals - October 2, 2007

I've set up five monthly goals for October over at Absolute Write. In order to meet these goals, I'm going to break them down into weekly goals here on my blog. As well as getting my butt moving towards those goals ahead of the last week of the month, it also gives me an excuse to keep my blog posts churning...

So, here goes:

1. Complete one revision of Little White Truths.
2. Edit two chapters of Death Brings the Victory.
3. Complete the next "section" of the plot outline for Death Brings the Victory.

I plan to complete all three of these goals by next Tuesday, October 9.

Three Weeks

Three weeks since my last post? Yikes!

Just a quick update:

The Hero re-write, now entitled Heroes Die Young, is in contract negotiations with a small publisher. Looks like there may be new life breathed into it after all...

FID is still out there, waiting for me to do another edit on it. I'm hesitant, since it's also in the hands of an agent who had requested some sample chapters a few weeks back. It wouldn't do me much good to start in on an edit, and then have a request for the full manuscript come in within days.

On a related note, when the request for sample chapters came in, it was accompanied by a request for a 3-8 page synopsis. Go figure, all I had was the 1-page variety I had to send with most of my queries. That was a long night...

Misery in Wallowing was rejected, but the magazine I last sent it to indicated they'd like to see additional work from me (MiW didn't seem to "go anywhere" with its story). So, I've been playing with another short story concept. We'll see how that turns out.

I'm back into DBV now. In order to get myself re-acclimated with the story, I'm going through and editing each of the chapters I wrote months (years?) ago. So far, I've finished three and am in the middle of the fourth.

It never ends...

An update

Just an update from my previous post:

The Hero re-write is complete. I'm now polishing up the query and synopsis before sending it around. I am stumbling across how to mention the book's previous "publisher" in the query.

Genesis was rejected. The particulars of the story really demand it goes to certain outlets, of which there are very few.

Misery in Wallowing has now been polished and submitted to another e-zine.

Hopefully, I'll maintain the pace and keep things moving. I've been pondering some additional Aston West short stories, so we'll see how that goes.

Happier News

Since much of the past month or more has been filled with rather "down" news (and since I haven't heard word one in weeks from the Agent Pool), I figured I'd create a post with some of the happier accomplishments:

My novels

The Hero Re-Write - Currently in the "polishing" stage. I hope to be finished with this by Labor Day.

FID - Finished, but will probably have another polish edit or two. It's currently being shopped around to some agents, but nothing has come back positive thus far.

DBV - The plot outline is around half-complete, and around 8 chapters have been worked. My vacation this past week spawned a tremendous amount of work on the outline.

My shorts
(short stories)

Misery in Wallowing - Completed, but needs a thorough edit. I plan to submit this to an e-zine once completed.

Genesis (my only completed work not featuring Aston West) - Completed and submitted to an e-zine.

So, hopefully the progress will continue (and hopefully I'll have a few more ideas for short stories). We'll see what happens.

Addendum to a Shitty Day

Had a meeting with our case worker yesterday, to get answers to the multitude of questions we had.

Turns out the decision to remove the children had been made the previous Friday, when she had come out to talk with us. It also turns out they are TAUGHT to mislead families when children are going to be removed (direct admission from our case worker).

And is it any wonder why there's always a shortage of foster families?