The horns of triumph

Huzzah, let the call ring forth into the hills, for I have actually finished a short story!

Yes, progress sings, echoing from all major landmarks. I finished the goldfish death story, which now needs a title and a good overhaul, and am relatively happy with it for a first draft. There's a lot I want to change, themes to tease out and quite a bit of dialogue to add to the end sequence and some exposition to fill up the middle...but overall, yeah, I feel pretty good for it.

I'm putting it up onto DeviantArt right now for a preliminary critique, then I'll start editing it and my short-short. I recently joined Zoetrope.com, under recommendation from my brother, so I'll see how that works out for me. The layout of the site goes that you deliver 5 in depth critiques and then you can post a new piece, which people then critique. According to Andrew there's some pretty solid critters there, so I might get some good stuff. Nowhere will be able to replace Inkspot in my heart, but it's worth a shot. So after I get it looked at on DA and fix up the major points, I'll fling it over there for more critique, then hunt down a market. Same for the short-short...I'll edit this draft, then put a revised version on both DA and Zoetrope if I end up liking it there.

In the meantime, I need to start doing crits at 'trope.

Also, further developments! The website layout is more or less complete, now I just need to write content. This blog will be one page (I'll inbed it in the site...there's a way to do that, right? sure there is!), then there'll be an author bio, a page of stories and writing samples (links to published works/where to buy them, quick synopses of stories that are in the process of being written/marketed, and some free goodies--stories that I won't be marketing but give a good example of my writing ability), a page of FAQ (which I'll be writing tonight) and a page of links to friend's sites, publisher sites, writing sites, etc. etc. etc. I'm actually pretty excited about the whole thing. It should be pretty good. Who knows if it'll end up being useful for marketing purposes? Nobody reads this and I update it fairly regularly.

So yeah. Going to edit those two stories while continuing to bridge gaps in Carnal Jesus, and hopefully pick up another short story soon. I like having lots of things to multitask on, it reminds me of the old days when life was good and the creativity flowed like wine. Not that wine really flows much.

I've also really been itching to do some movie and book reviews lately. Taking the Theory class is making me very literary-minded, and it would be fun to do an in-depth study of various things lying around the house. Look forward to some of those to be posted here, just to take up space and exercise my hands, if nothing else.

On a side note, I got the brochure for the Maui writer's conference and a writer's cruise off the shore of Alaska. Ohh I am SALIVATING. I really wish I could afford something like that, it looks like SO much fun. I'll save up my money...I've been beaten from all sides with ads for the conference and I always think of how great it would be...and the cruise! eee, I'm drooling again.

All right then. Don't have much left to say at the moment. I'm going to look over my notebook for some more short story inspiration, then launch into heavy editing. I should write a short story that doesn't have a central death-theme for a nice change from my work lately...It's been a big part of my inspiration lately, and it fascinates me, but I don't want to get typecast as a morbid writer. So I'll write something dealing with the philosophy of other issues for awhile, I should think.

Anyway, off into the land of greatness, as the horns sound and the valley rings out...and all that. Ta.