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The Read Report — August 2024

It’s August! Or at least it was when I read these books! Summer isn’t quite gone yet, but it’s fading fast. School is back in session, the first leaves are beginning to fall, and the most deranged of the yard decorators are already getting their Halloween decorations out.

It was a relatively light reading month for me, but that’s fine. Soon enough we’ll be huddled inside for a long Minnesota winter. I’ve got to enjoy the outdoors while I can.

Where possible, I’ve included Bookshop and Thriftbooks affiliate links instead of Amazon. If any of these books pique your interest, please use those links. I’ll get a small commission, and you’ll support real book stores instead of a fifth vacation house for a billionaire.

Ultimate X-Men Vol. 1 – 3

By Mark Millar and Chuck Austen

In the process of moving to the new house, I came across a box of old superhero comics that I had completely forgotten about. These Ultimate X-Men books harken back to a time when I wasn’t quite so jaded about reboots (and superhero comics in general).

My first thought was that these are some ugly covers—heavily photoshopped Wolverine, looking like a 20-year-old nu-metal singer. I don’t know what style they were shooting for, but it ended up somewhere between CGI and anime.

Thankfully, the covers don’t tell the whole story. The art within the books is solid, but not life-changing. There is talent on display, and a ton of detail and creative layouts. There are interesting angles, some non-obvious choices (like flashbacks and TV broadcasts done in sketchy pencils), and proper backgrounds. As much as I love indie comics, they’re often missing a lot of this complexity. That Marvel money does buy a certain base level of quality that I appreciate.

The Ultimate series were a collection of reboots, probably more notable these days as the origin of Miles Morales in Ultimate Spiderman, although I believe Ultimate X-Men was popular when it first came out. The characters are all redesigned (although there are some nods to older costumes) with the entire team remade as teenagers this time around. The first book really wants to call attention to this, repeatedly bringing up how young everyone is in a way that felt forced at times.

The point of a reboot is often to retell the classic stories, and these issues feel like a speedrun of X-Men classics, starting with the formation of the core team and quickly burning through arcs about the Sentinel program, Magneto, and Weapon X.

While the original Weapon X program was run by those dastardly Canadians, this version of the X-verse collects most of the nasty government programs under the good ol’ U.S. of A. There are some interesting undercurrents of mid-2000s distrust in government that feel very post-Iraq-invasion to me, which is interesting considering the series actually kicked off a good half year before 9/11.

I don’t think revisiting these books will inspire me to go subscribing to all the modern X-books or anything like that, but it was a fun trip down memory lane.

The Golden Compass

By Philip Pullman

Time for a new bedtime trilogy with the kiddos!

I acquired very cheap copies of the Dark Materials books years ago, and they’ve sat on the shelf, waiting to be read. I knew almost nothing about them going in, except that there was a big-budget movie of the first book that must have done badly, because they never bothered to finish the series.

It turns out that Phillip Pullman has built the kind of world I like. It’s fantasy, but it’s not just aping Tolkien. It’s a strange alternate history with a mildly steampunky anachronistic mix of technologies, and one where every single person has a slightly magical animal familiar called a daemon.

Lyra Belacqua (with her daemon, Pantalaimon) is the plucky child protagonist, growing up as a semi-orphan at an alternate Oxford, where she is loosely taken care of by the scholars. Thanks to their lack of parenting skills and her rebellious disposition, she spends most of her time running across the rooftops, sneaking through the catacombs, and picking fights with other urchins, rather than learning.

The plot kicks in when one of her friends goes missing during a rash of local kidnappings. Word on the street is that the “Gobblers” have taken these children for some unknown, nefarious purpose, and Lyra sets out to get them back. Along the way, she discovers the truth about her parents, who both turn out to be terrible people in their own special way. She gets the titular golden compass, a device that is essentially a very accurate (but difficult to read) oujia board. And she makes friends with an intelligent polar bear warrior king, a hot-air-balloon-flying Texan, and a witch.

In my opinion, the world-building is really the star of these books. The alternate world that Pullman has created is just different enough from ours to be incredibly mysterious. Each new discovery changes the rules, just a little bit. Oh, everyone has an animal companion who is bound to them? Oh, there are polar bears that can talk? Oh, there are witches that can fly? Some actual, visible spirits that everyone just accepts as a somewhat normal thing? Certain kinds of science-esque alchemy that the all-powerful-Church controls?

Lyra is defined mainly by her general defiance of authority, her ability to accomplish pretty much anything, and her high levels of sass. She is, of course, the chosen one that the prophecies foretold. Some fantasy tropes are apparently inescapable. Still, as a book geared toward children, I won’t complain too much. The protagonist is meant to be a reader-insert and a fantasy fulfiller.

Overall, the story does a good job constantly throwing obstacles in Lyra’s way, although there were a couple times where my suspension of disbelief was strained or some difficulties were elided without a satisfactory explanation.

What I’m Reading in September

Looking to September, I’m already reading the second book with my daughter, and it introduces a completely new protagonist from an entirely different world. I’m curious to see where this leads, and I suspect there are plenty of big secrets about what’s actually going on that are yet to be revealed.

I also have the next Witcher book 80% complete, and by golly, I’m going to finish it or die trying.

And of course, I’ll probably have at least have some graphic novels or comics thrown in the mix as well. What’s the difference, you ask? Only how pretentious you’re feeling while you read them.

See you at the end of September!

Year of Short Stories — Week #34

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 2
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 9
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 18 (7 personalized)

Submissions

I think I may have been spoiled by publications that respond to submissions quickly. I suppose I shouldn’t complain, since it gives me the opportunity to work on my stories in progress. I received a single form rejection this week—for one of my many recent drabble submissions—and that’s more exciting than the past couple weeks. Hopefully the long quiet means several of my stories are being ushered reverently into the shortlist piles for multiple magazines.

Or maybe summer is coming to a close, and all of the editors are very, very busy.

Writing

If it hasn’t been obvious, the last few weeks have felt as though I’m spinning my wheels on my stories in progress. This week, in the moments when I had time to work on my writing, I felt myself shying away from it. In the past, this sort of thing would precipitate a lot of negative self-talk, where my brain would happily provide a dialogue with some cruel and negligent parent I never had, telling me that I’m lazy and will never amount to anything.

Approaching middle age, I’ve gotten a little better at introspection and recognizing my own mental patterns, so I try to cut off these patterns of thought before they get going. When I’m “lazy,” it’s usually some form of demotivation, and the key to getting over that is to recognize the specific problem and plan to overcome it. To that end, I decided to evaluate these stories and write a little about how each one is going.

  • Red Eyes – This story has a complete draft. It has moments that I love, and the overall arc feels good. It has one scene that doesn’t really make sense and needs to be rewritten. It is 7000 words, and I would really like to cut that by…two thousand?…which would require some kind of restructuring. I’m also concerned that the core sci-fi concept is not clearly described and will be confusing.
  • Portrait of the Artist in Wartime – Incomplete. I suppose I’m still not totally confident in the structure that I’m using, which is a mix of interview and flashback. I’m also worried that the ending will feel too much like a twilight zone “gotcha” moment. This story is threatening to be longer than I intended.
  • The Vine – Very incomplete. I have a strong general idea of the beginning, middle, and end, but I haven’t nailed down all the scenes yet. When I try to bullet-point them, I have yet another story that looks like it’s going to be awfully long.
  • The Scout (temp title) – Incomplete. I have some strong “visual” ideas of the aesthetic I would like to get across in this story, but they aren’t well-defined enough. I need to develop this into more than a simple Venn diagram of cultural influences. I’m not entirely sure how I want the story to end. With only the first third drafted, it’s 1700 words, pointing to another fairly long story to round things out.

The clear through-line I hadn’t noticed before this exercise is that I’m working on a whole slew of long (maybe overly long) stories. Estimating the eventual lengths, I have something like 25,000 words of stories in progress. Assuming a 6000-word story is roughly three times more effort than a 2000-word story, it probably shouldn’t be surprising when I feel overwhelmed.

My original thought was that when I’m stuck on one thing I can work on something else. Instead, I now feel stuck on several things. My multitasking experiment has not been a success so far.

I think I have been staring at Red Eyes for too long, and I need to just make some rough cuts and submit it to Critters to get external feedback on what’s actually working and what’s not. Then I can revise again. This story is furthest along and should be prioritized.

Out of the three more incomplete drafts, The Vine is the one that I am most excited about at the moment. However, I’ve been going back and forth between outlining and writing, and for me, this is not a good workflow. I need to fix the problems with the outline and then try to write it straight through.

The other two stories will return to the back burner as I try to focus on one thing at a time again.

Goals for Next Week

  • Rewrite the difficult scene in Red Eyes and do some basic cleanup.
  • Submit Red Eyes to Critters.
  • Finish outlining scenes for The Vine.

The Story Idea Vault — Nouveau Riche in Space

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Feel free to use these ideas as a weekly writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Idea of the Week – Nouveau Riche in Space

Humankind has spread from Earth across the stars. Advances in robotics allow cheap harvesting of resources from asteroids and uninhabitable planets.

Now, those who live in space are far more wealthy than those on planets. The ground-bound population may save for a lifetime to buy their way up into the stars, while the space-born retire to dirt-cheap planet-side resorts.

What are the people on the ground willing to do for a ticket on a one-way rocket? What are the hottest spots in space tourism? And who is interested in toppling the entire galactic economy?

Year of Short Stories — Week #33

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 4
  • Submissions This Week – 1
  • Submissions Currently Out – 10
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Quick Update This Week

I’m going to be brief this week, because there’s not a lot to report. I continued to make progress on my unfinished stories, although I’ve been switching back and forth. This week I worked on The Vine again. My biggest worry was that it would end up being too long, but I had some ideas this week that I think will tighten it up quite a bit.

Once again, I received no responses to my submissions this week, but I did send out The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk to another publication that recently opened for submissions and seemed like a good fit.

Keeping tabs on Duotrope’s “What’s New in Fiction Publishing?” page also continues to pay off, as I noticed a couple of new or recently opened venues for my drabbles. I’ll be reviewing those this week to see if they’re worth a submission.

Goals for Next Week

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my main goal is to continue making headway on my (too many) stories in progress. I may also submit a drabble or two if these new publications look promising.

State of the Blog — Aug 2024

Amazingly, it has been almost four years since I started this blog. It has become such a part of my life that I have a hard time remembering the days when I didn’t send my thoughts out to the internet on a semi-weekly basis.

I strive to document my process, if only for the curiosity of other writers—from my Razor Mountain project documenting the first draft of a novel, to my NaNoWriMo series, to my current series where I’m spending the year writing and submitting short fiction.

My “State of the Blog” posts document the blog itself. I used to do these every six months, but I switched to a yearly schedule in 2023.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years blogging: 4
  • Total posts: 473
  • Total followers: 149
  • Monthly views: 299 (average over last 3 months)

The Year of Short Stories…and Less Blogging

The fairly obvious narrative when comparing the stats to 2023 is that the blog has slowed down considerably. In my first three years, I averaged 126 posts per year, which is about 2.5 posts per week. This year, I produced only 95 posts, or 1.8 posts per week, and the daily posts during last year’s NaNoWriMo even skew that a bit higher compared to the rest of the year. Sheer posting volume isn’t the be-all, end-all for a blog, but it does have an impact. All other things being equal, more posts make the stats go up.

I did plan to reduce my post frequency in 2024, although I ended up posting even less than I planned. Part of that was the intrusion of non-writing priorities. I moved to a new house, and my family and day job have kept me plenty busy.

Part of it was that I didn’t have a project like Razor Mountain, which lent itself to frequent posts. My “Year of Short Stories” series was, in some ways, the replacement for my Razor Mountain series, but that’s one post per week and occasionally less.

Another explanation for these statistics is the sort of content I’ve been posting. Razor Mountain (and the NaNoWriMo series, to some extent) had the advantage of an ongoing story to bring readers back on a regular basis, as well as the “development” portions that were more focused on the writing process. I’m very purposely excluding my actual fiction from my “Year of Short Stories” series, because you can’t sell first rights to a story if it’s already been publicly published—even on a blog. I’m writing approximately the same amount, but less of it is blog fodder.

I also don’t expect that “Year of Short Stories” is always the most exciting content for my readership. I hope it provides some value, if only for writers to compare to their own experiences and expectations, but I do it partly for myself. It gives me a record of what I’ve been working on, and motivates me to keep making progress every week.

New Content

Seeing the WordPress graphs go up is not the most important thing in the world, but I would like to feel that I’m providing something interesting for more readers. To that end, I have been thinking about how to spruce up the blog and post more. However, I am still committing the bulk of my writing time to work that isn’t going up on the blog. I think it’s the only way to progress my writing career. So, I want to post more things that readers like. I just don’t want it to take too much time or effort. Easy, right?

My first new experiment is the Story Idea Vault series, which started this past week. I’m excited about this, because I think most writers like prompts and ideas, and these are easy posts to write. I have huge documents full of story ideas, so I could write weekly posts for years without running out. This also gives me a good excuse to do a little brainstorming every week or two, in order to come up with new ideas.

And while I haven’t been posting as much in 2024, I’ve developed a backlog of half-finished posts. I may put a little more time into finishing some of those to give the blog more life. Still, what I would really like to find is another ongoing series that focuses more on the craft side of writing, as these are the type of posts that have mostly been MIA in the past year.

Razor Mountain

I was recently contacted by one of my old beta readers for Razor Mountain, wondering about the status of the story. I was a little sad to tell them that it’s effectively on hiatus.

As much as I enjoyed the experiment of writing a novel in public, the first draft is really only half of the work. To make it the best book it can be, I would need to dedicate months of effort to revision and critique. That would be a nice second act to the Razor Mountain series, and I do think it’s important to shed light on that part of the process. There is depressingly little writing about the struggles of editing and revision (and not just the grammar and copy-editing parts).

Unfortunately, writing Razor Mountain in public means that it would be very difficult to get a traditional agent or publisher interested in it. Unless the blog suddenly blew up and got millions of views, traditional publishing doesn’t want something that people have already seen. And despite my best efforts, I just can’t get myself excited about self-publishing.

I understand, at an intellectual level, that self-pub is a significant chunk of the landscape these days, and that it’s the way that many authors make their careers. Even so, I grew up in the era where traditional publishing was the only game in town, and I still have a certain…romanticism?…bias?…toward trad pub. Could I feel satisfied with a physical copy of my book, if I hadn’t first convinced a jaded, chain-smoking agent and an overworked, sassy editor that the book was worth spending time and money on? I don’t know. Say what you want about my biases, but we all have to follow the path that feels right. For me, that doesn’t include self-publishing, at least for now.

I haven’t given up on properly finishing Razor Mountain, but I won’t be picking it up again in 2024. I’m enjoying writing short fiction and getting involved in all the aspects of writing from idea to submission. It’s fun and satisfying to produce a heap of stories in the time that one novel would take. That doesn’t mean Razor Mountain is dead. It’s sleeping. I just need to figure out how to get excited about it again.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’re one of my regular (or even occasional) readers, know that you’re appreciated. As writers, we’re all throwing words out into the world and hoping that someone will read them. You doing that for me may not feel like much, but it’s nice to be heard.

If you have any thoughts about Words Deferred, or more generally, what you’re looking for or enjoying in blogs, feel free to drop a comment and let me know.

The Story Idea Vault — Wizard Lawyers

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a weekly writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Idea of the Week – Wizard Lawyers

There’s a world where magic is real: a powerful force in politics, war, and religion. But people can’t wield magic on their own; they can only get it from supernatural forces—for the right price.

The wizards who negotiate these contracts are power brokers, lawyers, expert deal-makers, and sometimes thrill-seeking gamblers. They know how to hedge their bets, and might enter into half a dozen interconnected contracts to get what they want while negating the consequences.

What’s the contract that breaks the system? Who brokered it? And what will happen when the most powerful beings in heaven to hell find out?

Year of Short Stories — Week #32

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 4
  • Submissions This Week – 3
  • Submissions Currently Out – 9
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Goal

Last week I set myself a word count goal: 1,000 words per day. Sadly, I only managed about 50% of that. Most of those words were on my newest story, temp titled The Scout. So far, it’s one of those stories where I am really enjoying certain aspects, and other aspects are very obviously falling short. Stories like that just need time and effort to find the pieces that will click into place and make the whole thing work.

Even though I didn’t meet my goal, it was a useful motivator, so I’m setting the same goal this week (1k words/day).

Submissions and Responses

It continues to be quiet. I received no responses on my current submissions; maybe the editors are all enjoying the last few weeks of summer.

I have purposely stuck to publications that accept simultaneous submissions for my drabbles so that I could submit widely. I sent each of these three stories out again this week. Of course, Murphy’s Law of Short Story Submissions ensures that after weeks with no responses, I’ll eventually get them all back at once.

Goals for Next Week

Once again, I’m shooting for 1,000 words on my works in progress per day, and planning to send out one or two more simultaneous submissions.

Year of Short Stories — Week #31

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 4
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 6
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Another Story

Last week, feeling blocked on my stories in progress, I started working on a new story. This week, inspiration struck for yet another idea. Since I was excited about that, I let the momentum carry me and started on a fourth story.

I do believe that it’s important to work on finishing things, and that writers can fall into a bad habit of chasing ideas without ever putting in the work to revise and polish. Unfortunately, revision is never as thrilling as that first discovery of a new story, and sometimes working on exciting new ideas can be a good emotional reset. Working on the thing that excites you at the moment can be a good way to boost word count as well.

Simultaneous Subs

This was the second week in a row with no responses to my current submissions. Since I purposely picked publications that accept simultaneous submissions for my drabbles, I should probably send those to at least one or two more places.

Goals for Next Week

This upcoming week, I’m going to try to motivate myself with a word count goal. I plan to write 1,000 words on one of these stories in progress every day. That should get me close to finishing at least one of them—although my first drafts tend to run long.

Year of Short Stories — Week #30

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 3
  • Submissions This Week – 3
  • Submissions Currently Out – 7
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Release

I’m happy to report that my tongue-in-cheek horror drabble, “Renter’s Dilemma,” is in the anthology Dead Girls Walking (The Red Volume) which released this week. It is available in EPUB and paperback.

Submissions

Since I finally finished my big ‘ol list of publications that seem like they’d be interested in drabbles, I figured I had better send out the ones I’ve had sitting around.

I sent out Tom, Dick, and Larry; A Going Away Party; and No More Kings.

Goals for Next Week

Short update this week. I just didn’t get much done besides submissions.

It’s starting to feel like I haven’t finished a new story in a while, so this week I’m going to focus on really churning through my stories in progress.

Year of Short Stories — Week #29

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 3
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 3
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

No Submissions, No Responses

My stories are currently submitted to publishers with longer turnaround times, so I had no responses this week. It was a nice break to get caught up on other writing tasks. I still haven’t submitted those drabbles that have been sitting around. More on that below.

The Writing Pipeline

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my writing pipeline. When I find myself doing the same type of work (like editing drafts) for too long, I lose focus and slow down. It is good to actually finish projects instead of endlessly jumping between half-finished things, but when I’m getting stuck on a project, it’s better to make some progress on another piece than grind ineffectively.

This week, I tried to diversify my writing more than I have been. I spent some dedicated brainstorming time generating new story ideas, which I haven’t done in quite a while. I also started outlining the new story I mentioned last week, The Vine. Finally, I wrote more of Portrait of the Artist in Wartime, a story where I suspect I will end up with a large word count and have to pare down.

What I didn’t do this week is any editing of Red Eyes, which is the story I was stuck on.

Next week, I’m going to try the same tactic and split my time among a few projects, and I might go back to Red Eyes to see if I can be more productive.

The List

The last thing I did this week is finish compiling my big list of potential publications for submitting drabbles.

One interesting discovery (which is obvious in retrospect) is that many publications will pay a fixed amount per story, and while $5-20 per story doesn’t seem like much, it ranges from a respectable semi-pro to top-tier professional pay rate when the story is exactly 100 words.

My next step will be to rearrange these publications into a rough ranking. I’d like to try more simultaneous submissions, but that will be limited by the amount of time I want to spend submitting.

Goals for Next Week

  • Work on brainstorming, The Vine, Portrait, and Red Eyes – whatever feels most productive
  • Submit some drabbles