Angie's Desk

Anthology Markets

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:18:00 +0000

I've been getting a lot of hits on these posts, so if you've just wandered in off the internet, hi and welcome. :) I do these posts every month, so if this post isn't dated in the same month you're in, click here to make sure you're seeing the most recent one. Markets with specific deadlines are listed first, "Until Filled" markets are at the bottom. There are usually more details on the...

Hanging With Wolves

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:05:00 +0000

Jim and I spent yesterday (Sunday) at Wolf Mountain Sanctuary, in southern California in Lucerne Valley. Well, at the sanctuary, plus driving up and back with some friends; I think we spent at least half the day in the car. It was worth it, though. Wolf Mountain is smaller than I was expecting, but Tonya, the woman who owns the place, said that they're working on moving to a larger property. ...

So Much For That Experiment

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:49:00 +0000

So the argument is that e-books go up on the torrent sites, a bazillion people download them for free and those who enjoy the book go out and buy a legit copy, once they've found out for sure that the book is worth spending money on. I was skeptical, but figured I should give folks a chance. So back in July I issued a challenge to the pirates. Someone had uploaded a copy of my story, "Learning...

Is YOUR Senator Pro-Gang-Rape?

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:06:00 +0000

Yeah, that's pretty inflamatory. I'm feeling pretty damn inflamed right now, so I think that's appropriate. In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones, a twenty-year-old employee of KBR -- at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton, and hey look, they're hiring -- was working in Iraq. Her co-workers drugged her, gang-raped her, abused her so badly her breasts were disfigured permanently, then locked her in a...

I'm On Amazon

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Google alerts finally got around to telling me one of my stories is up on Amazon, in a Kindle edition, and apparently has been since 30 September. I have to admit I'm of two minds about this. Part of me was jumping up and down and doing the virtual "Woot!" thing, because Amazon is a freaking huge market and there's no getting away from that. Another part of me was going, "Huh..." though,...

Reading Habits

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:49:00 +0000

A meme-thing about reading habits, gacked from Charles. Questions are in italics. Do you snack while you read? If so, favorite reading snack: I eat or drink while reading sometimes, but not every time. And there's no particular thing I go for while reading. Sometimes I'll be eating a meal, sometimes I'll just feel like popcorn or a bagel or some tea (peppermint with honey) or whatever else...

Another Plagiarist

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:05:00 +0000

LJ User Gwendolynflight, over in the Merlin fandom, decided that she didn't want to do the work to learn to write and refine her technique and develop her own style. She wanted hugs and pats and e-cookies for her wonderful writing right now. So instead of writing a novel of her own, she grabbed a copy of Jordan Castillo Price's first PsyCops book, Among the Living, did a bit of editing to...

Anthology Markets

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:16:00 +0000

New Column -- Learning the Stitches

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:03:00 +0000

I have a new column up at Romancing the Blog. I was thinking about how I learned to crochet as a little kid, and realized that I learned to write pretty much the same way, and that the approach I took (purely through serendipity) seems to have worked out pretty well for both. Nothing profound, but rather a look at a way of learning something new and why I think it worked particularly well for...

Bullies Get Butts Kicked by Cross-Dressers

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 10:28:00 +0000

Gacked from a few places around the net. :D A couple of homophobic thugs in Swansea, Wales, attacked two men who were walking down the street in short skirts and high heels. The two cross-dressers turned around and wiped the sidewalk with the jerks. It turns out the cross-dressers were a couple of cage fighters -- talk about picking a fight with the wrong guys! LOL! Someone named CJ in...

Newsflash! Saturn Has a Massive Ring Around It!

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:55:00 +0000

No, really. Check out the photo. The mass of the ring begins 3.7 million miles outside that of the inner ring system we're all familiar with, and the density of the ice crystals and dust is so low that no one's ever noticed it before. But "the cool dust -- about 80 Kelvin (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit) -- glows with thermal radiation. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, used to spot the ring,...

Review -- "Spirit of Vengeance"

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 14:53:00 +0000

Book Utopia posted a great review of A Spirit of Vengeance. ============= From the very first words, the unrelenting emotion and overwhelming grief grip the reader by the lapels and refuses to let go. There is no preamble. The author shoves you straight into the middle of Josh’s confusion regarding his partner’s death, and holds you down in it until there’s nowhere else to turn. That’s not a...

Flash Plagiarism

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:02:00 +0000

Someone named Richard Ridyard has been swiping lines from all over -- including from Stephen King -- and has just been exposed big-time by Angel Zapata. Thanks to Writtenwyrdd for the link. One thing which makes this case notable is that, unlike every single other plagiarism case I've looked at in the last couple of years, there is no one sticking up for Mr. Ridyard here. Every other...

Failure

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:49:00 +0000

Kristine Kathryn Rusch has been posting a book she's writing entitled The Freelancer's Guide to Survival on her blog a chapter at a time. I think I mentioned it here before, but in case I didn't, she's been at it for a while now and has compiled a lot of great info and advice. Ms. Rusch is a writer and editor who's worked in a number of genres (I'm familiar with her from SF/Fantasy -- she used...

Will You Read My Story?

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Josh Olson, the writer who did the screenplay for A History of Violence, wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, explaining exactly why he, and many other pro writers, won't read scripts, stories, novels, outlines, treatments, etc., that hopeful newbies try to hand them. Although his tone is rather harsh [cough] he makes some excellent points and I...

New Book and a Signing

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:11:00 +0000

Not mine, but a friend's. :) Charles Gramlich, who's a university psych professor in his day job, wrote a book called Write with Fire, subtitled "Thoughts on the Craft of Writing." I have it and enjoyed it very much. It's different from most writing books in that it's not set up like a textbook. Rather, it's a collection of essays talking about a wide variety of topics, some the same as or...

The Outer Alliance

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:23:00 +0000

I recently ran across mention of a group called The Outer Alliance, a support and advocacy group for people involved in GLBTQ speculative fiction. Their mission statement is as follows: As a member of the Outer Alliance, I advocate for queer speculative fiction and those who create, publish and support it, whatever their sexual orientation and gender identity. I make sure this is reflected in...

Review -- "Candy Courage"

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 00:14:00 +0000

PD Singer had some nice things to say about my short story, Candy Courage: ===== I don't review in the traditional sense: I don't assign ratings or stars, or warble on and on about something a friend has written that (if truth be told, as it so seldom is) is riddled with typos and has at least one plot hole that a medium-duty truck could drive through without scraping the rear-view...

Irony, Thy Name Is Government

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:06:00 +0000

Also incompetence, but it's the irony I'm mainly appreciating here. This morning at around ten, the Coast Guard carried out some exercises on the Potomac near the bridge where President Obama's motorcade passed by on his way to a 9-11 memorial event. Unfortunately they didn't think to, like, maybe notify any other agencies of what they were doing, so the exercise resulted in CNN reporting ten...

Anthology Markets

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:18:00 +0000

Perfect Conditions

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:27:00 +0000

Isn't it wonderful to wake up to the dulcet tones of jackhammers outside your window? Absolutely conducive to concentration and creativity, right? [headdesk] Our building has had sewer line problems for years and the Association finally decided to do something about it. Which is all good and fine, but the process sucks. (And I imagine it'll be stinking as well soon enough.) Eight to five...

Atheists Form Pet Rescue Group

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:25:00 +0000

All right, this is just awesome. :D Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA is a group formed of atheists who'll still be around when all the saved Christians are taken up in the Rapture. Christians who think they might be among the elect can contract with this group to come and rescue their pets left behind after the event. Our service is plain and simple; our fee structure is reasonable. For $110.00...

Contests and Sales

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 18:23:00 +0000

I remember some discussion a year or so ago about whether entering contests was worthwhile from a sales point of view. I can't say anything about the general experience, but I now have a data point. My novelette, "A Spirit of Vengeance" made the finals in the 2009 EPPIEs competition. This isn't a huge contest; hardly anyone outside of e-publishing has ever heard about it, and even within that...

Making Amends

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 07:58:00 +0000

Icarusancalion over on LJ has posted an explanation/apology/amends for something she did, attacking and slandering a Buddhist temple and its Lama over a period of years because she couldn't face her own responsibility for her failures as a nun and a Buddhist. Her hateful and lying words from the past have been used by others to hurt this temple and her old teacher, and she hopes that her...

Anthology Markets

angiebenedetti@gmail.com (Angie) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:37:00 +0000