Whoooo! I'm On a List (Datlow's Long List)

Bit of a brag post. But, hey. Sometimes you gotta do, what you gotta do. (Let's have some fun with this writing malarkey)

I made Ellen Datlow's long list for Year's Best Horror Volume 5. Four times.

I'm so pleased that Daltow reconises poetry, too.

Congratulations to all my writing friends on the list. Woooooh!

Non-English Markets for Short Stories

I would highly recommend Douglas Smith's Foreign Market List. Foreign markets meaning in this case non-English language markets.

 I've just sold a reprint to the Romanian venue Revista SRSFF.

The nice thing about the writing business is that you can resell a story over and over again. Once the rights revert back to you, the writer is free to offer other language rights.

As you will be offering different language rights to different venues, (i.e.  Romanian language rights to a Romanian publisher, German language rights to a German publisher etc.), you are also free to submit a story  simultaneously to different venues.

Douglas Smith provides a good introduction to selling to overseas markets on his website. I would recommend it. And there's a good post from him on the Amazing Stories blog.

Have you sold a story to a non-English language market. Any recommendations for me?

Writing and Sacrifice

A recent post on the Horror Writer's Association LA chapter from Lisa Morton caused a fair bit of comment recently. It's a list of questions that tell you if you're a professional writer or not. Ten Questions To Know If You're a Pro. Defining professional is a very touchy subject for many writers, and it sparked off a fair amount of comment.

Here's a link to John Scalzi's blog that provides a commentary that I agree with.

Now I'm posting not wanting to reawaken controversy, but because I thought Ms Morton's post was interesting. It made me think. Not so much about defining professionalism, but about sacrifices and a writing career. And that niggling question, 'Am I working hard enough?' or even, 'Am I working too hard?'

I reckon I work quite hard. I do about 5 hours writing a day (but that includes everything, research, time wasting on the internet, editing). Undoubtedly, I could work harder (I failed the test).

Ultimately it's  a question we can only answer for ourselves. But it's good to stop once in and while and reflect.