author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Not, however, the novel. I took my own advice and jumped forward to the Gala Bookstore Grand Opening scene, and didn't even get through that before crossing the mythical 50K line. I did have another one of those plotting breakthroughs, though. I realized I should conflate Charles Welton (father of vanished Sam, fomenter of anti-Bookwyrm sentiment) and the beat cop (also fomenter of anti-Bookwyrm sentiment and an extra rock to throw at Gwen whilst she is up her tree) because 1) they served too similar functions, and 2) that would make things even harder for Gwen. Bad enough when the police officer she should be able to rely on for protection thinks she's guilty, if only by association, of unspeakable things; worse when said police officer has been directly affected by said unspeakable things.

So what's up in December, eh? Well. Wouldn't you like to know. I think I shall continue working on this novel, 2K a day where possible, but I'll make a more concerted effort to also allot time for short story rewrites. You'll notice, for instance, that I haven't blogged about finishing the rewrite on either "Turning the Earth" nor "Seeds of Our Future." There's a reason for that. Maybe I could have done it if I wasn't also one of the Boulder NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaisons. Maybe I could have done it if I hadn't spent so many Tuesdays and Thursdays sleeping past noon, dammit.

I may begin upping my articles/essays output, as I won't have any immediate paying projects in December. Between Constant-Content (who seem themselves supportive even if I have to get medieval on one of their customers) and a new venture my current non-fiction editor is possibly undertaking, there will be opportunities for such. Also, it's really about time I wrote something to send to a Blessed Bee publication again. It's been far too long since "Faith Based Charity, Pagan Style."

And speaking of RichLifeMedia, blogging at Splendid Gardening will be on hiatus in December. I'll continue blogging here, of course, and also at Denver Metblogs.

Sounds a lot like a New Year's Resolution post, doesn't it? Well, when NaNoWriMo ends, it's like a brand new year dawns on December 1. Try it sometime! You'll see.

Hullo. Update: Another article of mine at Constant-Content has sold. It's called Awaken to Dreams: Begin to Remember." It's part of a series, which fact I hope will tempt those who purchase one-time rights to it to become repeat customers. As usual, my friendly blog readers, should you see it somewhere on teh interweebs, check that my name is attached to it like it oughtter be, 'k? In this case, what was sold was "usage rights," which means my by-line stays, they don't make edits, they only get to publish it once and in one place only, and I get to license it to others.

Aha! Found it. Guess who bought it? AvivaDirectory, that's who. And again, no by-line! I'm going to remind them again, but that they did it a second time after being told not to? That's really disrespectful.

"Ten Surprising Facts About Ten U.S. Dollars" has finally surfaced, but oh the shame of it! The person who purchased exclusive rights to it is trying to pass it off as their own work! My by-line is missing. I have notified them of the requirement they seem to have overlooked, but they have seen fit to ignore me. It's over here. It has a comment section. You know what to do.

Correction! AvivaDirectory HAVE added my by-line to the piece! They are in compliance with Constant-Content's policies... BARELY. They tacked my name on right at the end, which was why I overlooked it. Silly me, I was looking at the place where authors' by-lines usually go. You know, under and immediately following the title? I have requested that they move it, but they are not obliged to, at least not by the letter of the licensing policy. So I rescind my previous "sic 'em" command. Play nice y'all.

(Still haven't located the purchaser of "Untying the Knot," while we're on the subject. Google turns up nothing. Oh well.)

Nearly forgot to mention this! I iz published again. Sorta-kinda. A bit.

So, you know about Second Life? Virtual world where you can build stuff, program stuff, or run around in your avatar doing unspeakable X-rated things? The massively multiplayer game whose in-game currency actually has an exchange rate with US dollars? Right. So, I play that from time to time. Not with the unspeakable X-rated things, mind you; I'm more of a Tringo hall loiterer and eternally amateur object builder. My avatar's name is Kavella Maa. She looks about as much like me as I had the patience to tweak (did you know there are, like, four different slider bars just to alter the shape of the bridge of your avatar's nose?). Feel free to add me to you friends list if you're in there and wanna.

In any case, one of the socialization structures in Second Life is "groups." And one of the groups is the Writing & Performance Center. And they hold a writing contest every month.

Last month it was a short story contest. 500 words max. Must end with a twist; hence the name of the contest, "The Twist In The Tale."

So it got to be about an hour before deadline, and I thought, "Damn, I really oughtta enter this thing." So I opened a text editor and pretended it was homework for writing class. Got it done just under the wire, pasted it in all its purple-prose glory into a Notecard object in game, and dropped the Notecard into the group leader's inbox.

Well, when I got home from VP and finally started cleaning out my inbox, I came across an email such as you get when someone in Second Life sends you an instant message and you're not online to get it. It was from the group leader, Deidru Valentine, and it said, "Congratulations, you have won first prize; may we have permission to distribute your story on a Notecard?"

Well yay!

So I gave her permission, requested that my real life (or "1st life") publishing byline be used, and there was much rejoicing.

I have no idea how many people entered or what the quality of entries was (nor whether said quality can be judged by that of the winners of the previous two contests), but it amuses me that in the game, on Info Island II, in the Writing & Performance Center (view location), there is a plaque on the wall that you can click on to read my story. It's publication, of a sort. And hey! I got paid for it! Four hundred Linden dollars, baby! That's about... $1 US. Oh well. But it'll pay my ante in Tringo for a few nights, that's for sure.

Sweet! Another Constant-Content sale. Somebody else decided they were willing to pay money to put my words on their website. In this case, it's a cute little trivia list about the ten dollar bill. I know, I know, not exactly inspiring stuff, but trivia lists were selling at the time, so I wrote one. Again, the purchase was anonymous, so until Google finds it I won't know where or whether you can read it. I'll link it when I know. If you're feeling watch-doggy, the title is "Ten Surprising Facts About Ten U.S. Dollars." The purchaser paid for exclusive rights to use it, so it should only appear in one place with my byline intact.

Thank you, anonymous purchaser!

In other news, there's a familiar name in Heliotrope Issue 1. Heliotrope is a professionally paying ezine (pays $.05/word for short fiction) that I just came across via their submissions call thread at Absolute Write (submission guidelines here). They ought to have sounded familiar to me, because during the live reading Saturday night at the Borderlands workshop, one of the students read this story of his, or as much of it as would fit in 10 minutes. Then Elizabeth Monteleone called "Time!" and he had to stop. I wanted intensely to know how it ended. Now I get to find out! Yay! Congrats, Mr. Colangelo!

*blink-blink*

Just got an email from Constant Content. Apparently, this sweet little erotica short-short that I wrote up in response to someone's request for fiction featuring their lingerie catalog... sold.

The buyer wishes to remain anonymous. I have no idea where it's going to be published.

If any of y'all happen to Google it up before I do, lemme know, 'K? (And if it shows up without my byline, really let me know, 'cause the rights they bought doesn't allow removal of my byline. And every request currently having to do with lingerie seems to ask for the set of rights include byline removal. So I'm worried they might've made a mistake. We Shall See.)

*blink-blink*

...Sweet!

Hullo. I'm in the middle of some persistent blahs at the moment, blahs with combine travel recovery apathy with holiday apathy. The result: I've spent the last couple of days mostly in bed, reading books picked up at Denver's Tattered Cover and Fairhaven's Village Books. I regret to say that the latter bookstore hasn't made as wise a choice in adhesive labelling as the former. A Tattered Cover book's pricing labels peel off clean and easy (as do those on a book bought at the Boulder Bookstore), whereas my Village Books purchases had labels I really had to work hard at removing. They did eventually come off, however, so they're worlds ahead still of some bookstores I could mention but don't.

However, in the midst of the past two days apathy, we are in life and joyous surprises. First, a new short story began really taking form on the plane from Denver to Seattle. It's not tangible enough yet to get it a place in the database, but it's close. It's one of those odd plots that started with a misperception: in this case, a hallucination. Except I don't really get hallucinations. Maybe it was an after-image. Or maybe it was what my friends and I have taken to calling "a Charles de Lint moment," just one of those random encounters one has with the weird and out-of-the-ordinary and possibly supernatural. Anyway. Whatever that blue glow at the top of Norwood Drive really was, in the story it's an angel. Or the ghost of an angel. And it shows up for about two seconds every evening at the intersection of Norwood and Broadway at a quarter to eleven.

So that was good. Then for the surprise waiting for me in my inbox when I finally checked email late Monday afternoon: I've been accepted to Viable Paradise X! [Edited to better reflect the resulting level of enthusiasm.] I suppose those first three chapters of Drowning Boy have benefitted even more greatly from the latest revision than I'd realized. Hooray!

Both of these good things necessitate work, so it's a good thing that I am pronouncing tomorrow A Day Free Of Apathy and getting right on it.

You can now read "Right Door, Wrong Time" at Twilight Tales.

I hope you like.

On Friday, June 16th, I'll have fiction published again. Yes! Having undergone yet another title change (from "The Right Time" to "Right Door, Wrong Time"), my Award Winning Flash Fiction Story[TM] will see the light at Twilight Tales. The title change was the idea of the fiction editor, Ed deGeorge--and may I just say that an editor whose name is Ed is just set, you know? He can use "ed" as his email handle at the twilighttales.com domain, and it can mean "editor at Twilight Tales" or it can mean "Ed at Twilight Tales." That's totally cool. You just can't do neat wordplay like that with "Niki". I mean, you can, but I've heard all the possibilities sung at me on the kindergarten playground, and they're all goofy and unuseful.

Anyway, it works for me. The title, I mean. It's a title that tells us what's known up-front, rather than giving away what is revealed at the end. Then again, "The Right Time" was ambiguous enough to apply to both before the revelation and after--but I think wittering about which of several very similar titles is best is right up next to inserting a comma in the morning and taking it out in the evening. It's a sign that it's time to let the editor make the changes.

Besides, what sense does it make to talk about "the revelation" in a 700-word short-short? I mean, yes, suspense can be done in flash fiction, it ought to be there, but it only lasts about a minute or two, since that's all the time it takes to read the whole thing.

In any case, there's a date attached to the promise of publication. When the story goes up on Friday, I'll post a link.