Scott Recommends – Page 4 – Scott William Carter

Friday Links

February 28, 2008February 28, 2008Scott William Carter

I’m about to head out to the Oregon coast for a writing workshop I’ve been looking forward to for some time. The very talented Denise Little of Tekno Books will be leading a workshop on writing for anthologies. It will also be a chance to catch up with many talented writers, many whom I’ve known for years.

But before I go, I thought I’d try to start something new, a Friday post on interesting things I bumped into over the course of the week. Here you go:

Up on The First Book blog this week: Mark Henry, and his novel Happy Hour of the Damned
“Are Women Human?” And other publishing highlights. I especially liked this book title: How to Write a How to Write Book.
John Scalzi’s Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money. Some ponts worth pondering. He’s surprisingly frank about how much he’s made and where his income has come from.
My agent, Rachel Vater, has some interesting posts on the value a website has for a professional writer — even an aspiring one. Here and Here.

Publishing Moves at Glacial Speed

February 5, 2008February 5, 2008Scott William Carter

My sister tipped me off to a great article on why novel publishing can be so slow — sometimes taking several years, from when an agent sells a manuscript, before a book sees print. Well worth the read: “Waiting for It,” at the NY Times.

Weird Tales Subscription Drive

March 14, 2007January 17, 2008Scott William Carter

I just received word from Weird Tales that my story, “Directions to Mourning’s Deep,” certainly one of the strangest and shortest stories I’ve written (only a couple of pages, and written in second person), is scheduled to appear in the April/May issue. They’ve done a major revamp of the magazine, and in honor of this, they’re doing a subscription drive in which you can get six issues (a full year) for a mere $12. A fantastic deal. If you like weird fiction, take advantage of it. Here’s a shot of the new cover:

Also, you may have noticed a few changes to the website. I decided that the old site needed a little revamp, and since my day job is working in instructional technology for a university, it was a good excuse to learn a little more about PHP, CSS, and other geekery, things I needed to learn anyway to help faculty and students. I wanted to better embed my blog on my site as well as take advantage of tools which allow me to have the same content appear on multiple pages without actually having to update that content on every page. I’m still by no means a professional web designer, and it’s still not exactly what I want, but I’m happy with the progress. Probably more small tweaks, as time allows.

Road Trips and Reading

July 6, 2005January 17, 2008Scott William Carter

Took a two-week whirlwind road trip with my wife, seeing Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, a tiny bit of Texas, and a chunk of southern California. The initial excuse was to see the Grand Canyon, which neither of us had seen before, but we also saw a number of other national parks: Crater Lake (we’d been there before, but always love seeing it), Lassen National Park, Bryce Canyon, Zion National Park, and Carlsbad Caverns among them. We made a stop in San Diego, staying at a nice resort on Mission Bay called Paradise Point, and then capped off our trip with a day at Disneyland. Highlights also included: stopping in Rachel, Nevada, ten miles from Area 51, after our car was attacked by a swarm of grasshoppers; horseback riding in Red Canyon; watching 400,000 bats make their nightly exit out of a cave one night short of a full moon; and buying our ticket to the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico from the man who started it: Lt. Walter Haut, the public information officer in the Air Force ordered to release the press release saying the government had, indeed, recovered an alien spacecraft in 1947 (only to have him later ordered to retract it). Recent good reads: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard. Sebold’s was interesting because of the point of view, the fourteen year old main character essentially a ghost who follows what happens to her family and friends after her murder (I’m not giving anything away here, because the murder happens in the opening pages) — which, from a writer’s point of view, is a nifty way of being able to tell a story from an omniscient point of view. Paradise had all the things that make Leonard fun — great dialog, snappy writing, colorful characters — but I don’t think it’s one of his better books. It’s already starting to fade in my mind.

Not much writing done during the trip, but it’s slowly coming back up to speed. Taking a week off next week from the day job to do some marathon writing, which should be interesting. It’s the third draft of a young adult fantasy I’m trying to get right, making it easier to put in some long days (since I know the story), but I’ve never done more than two marathon days in a row before (which I define as writing for at least eight hours a day). See how it goes.