Writing update

So, as of tonight, I’ve finished editing three stories that I’m considering for submission to Cemetery Dance magazine. I think they’ve turned out pretty good, but we’ll see. I’ve turned them over to my alpha reader (my wife 🙂 to see what she thinks. After that, I’ll have my beta reader (you know who you are) look them over and get their opinion. After that, I’ll do a final edit then consider it ready for submission whenever it becomes time.

Editing these stories has been interesting. When I first wrote them, I thought they were pretty good. After gaining some perspective and maturity along the way, I discovered that the stories were not all that well written. They tended to be verbose, and the writing was stilted. Much of it “told” what was going on rather than “showed”. Kind of funny how, after you mature in your writing, it’s easy to see stuff that just doesn’t work for a variety of reasons. Bottom line: the new, edited versions of the shorts are, in my opinion, way better than the originals.

I’m curious to see what those who read the stories think of them. Once I know, I’ll post an update. And once I know which of the stories I’m going to submit, I’ll post the other two here.

Still making progress on the most recent novel, though it’s been somewhat slow given the emphasis on getting the short stories ready to go. All in all, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve accomplished over the last week. I finished editing three short stories *and* still made some progress on my current WIP.

–dp

What’s up with my writing

Well, I’ve posted absolutely nothing for a while. Must have been slacking, right? Actually, just the opposite. I’ve been quite busy. With what? Well, here’s what I’m currently working on.

First, a certain magazine I read is accepting submissions for short stories in a couple of months. To be ready when they give the word, I’m now editing several of my favorite stories that fit right into their genre (that would be horror/thriller/dark fiction). Ok, so I’ll let the cat out of the bag. It happens to be a publisher by the name of Cemetery Dance. Not only do they publish great books from the horror/thriller/dark fiction genres, they also publish a quarterly magazine with awesome short stories. I’m hoping, with a little luck … well, a lot of luck, to join the ranks of the amazing authors already published.

Second, I’m back to editing my current work in progress, entitled Whispers in the Dark. When I finished the first draft, the ending was much less powerful than I’d originally envisioned. I think this was partly (or mostly) due to being burnt out at the time I hit The End. So, I decided to go back and do an edit/rewrite of the last chapter. I hope to finish it, and an edit of the entire manuscript, within the next couple of months while I work on editing and cleaning up the short stories. That should also give me enough time to prep for this year’s NaNoWriMo

I think once the most recent book is complete, and I’m done with the shorts, I might start posting some of my writing here. Perhaps some short stories (not the one I submit, of course :-), perhaps some of my most recent book, or maybe even my first book. Or, I could be really adventurous and start posting from my second book, which is about 2/3 complete. That could be quite entertaining seeing as of right now I have no earthly idea how it is supposed to end.

–dp