A year ago, I posted my 2022 reading and writing resolutions. Now it's time to check in and see how I did. 

Reading
Goal: Read 45 books
Achieved! I read 45 books exactly and reviewed 23 of them (see links below)

Goal: 8 of those books would be indies
Achieved! I read 8 indies exactly and reviewed 3 of them (see links below)

Goal: Greater than 50% of the books would be written by female authors
Achieved! 66.66% were written either exclusively by women or at least one woman, where multiple authors contributed

Goal: At least 50% of the books would be written by authors who have a marginalized identity. 
Achieved! 55.55% were written either exclusively by or including at least one author with at least one marginalized identity

I read a ton of great books this year. It was a good mix of new, old, big hits, and quieter releases. SciFi and Fantasy tied as my most common genres, which is no surprise as those are always my favorites. 
​Here's my reading list from 2022:

Writing
Goal: Have my WIP query ready by February
Achieved! I sent my first round of queries for this project in February 2022.

Goal: Send at least 5 queries per month
11/12 on this one, can't win them all, though some months I sent more than 5. 

Goal: Complete the first draft of my next WIP by August 2022
Nope! This one is still under construction. 

Goal: Continue attending writing groups whenever possible
Achieved!

Goal: Keep up with this website
Achieved! A couple months were slimmer on content than others,  but that's the way it goes sometimes. 


I'm still deciding on my 2023 resolutions/goals. Did you achieve your 2022 goals? Did we read any of the same books? Let's discuss in the comments!

 I'm so excited to announce that my short story "Please Don't be a Serial Killer" will be published in Nightmare Sky, a night sky themed anthology from Death Knell Press. My story is my first attempt at publishing horror rather than scifi, so I was surprised and thrilled! I will say that there's a lot of humor in my story compared to most horror, so it's still very me. 

You may recognize the name Red Lagoe, the editor, as someone who was on my 2021 reads post. She has two anthologies of horror out now, Lucid Screams and Dismal Dreams. She also recently released a stand alone short story, "Black Feathered Fury" and has many shorts published in other anthologies. 

Nightmare Sky will be published in January 2023!


Transparency note: I know Red Lagoe in real life, as we have been in the same writing group. She did not see my short story in advance. I did not think submitting to her was a guarantee for inclusion.

Wow June flew by insanely fast with almost no posts! What happened to me? Well, covid happened. 
I wear a mask in public, at stores, on transit, at work, etc. But it still got me. And it was no joke! I was very happily vaccinated and boosted already, so it could have been much worse. Especially considering my asthma. I'm on the mend now, though!

Here's what's coming up on the blog: 
More book reviews 
A publishing announcement
A review of my experience at Futurescapes at Snowbird in August

Thanks for your patience while I coughed my way through June!

Readers of the blog may recall my short story The Undoing of Maggie Jinkowski, which won first place in the short story category at the Hampton Roads Writers Conference in 2019 and was recently included in the Kitsap Writers Group Anthology. I was recently asked if I'd be interested in adapting it into a screenplay format. Not a formal offer to produce it or anything, just gauging interest and seeing how it goes. I decided to give it a shot.

One of the resources recommended to me was WriterDuet, a website which already knows the right formatting for a screenplay and will help guide you in writing it. It made the basics super easy and you can use it for FREE. You can also export your project from the website to Word or a PDF. Highly recommend if you're looking to get your feet wet in screenwriting but worry about getting bogged down in formatting.

Another resource I tried out was the Screenwriter's Bible. It's a big book and has resources for almost any stage of screenwriting you're in. From format to best practices to story telling. It was very helpful in explaining to me how to do some of the more complex strategies I wanted to use, like flashbacks and voice over. There are many editions of this book out there, so don't feel pressure to buy the latest, an older edition will get you started just fine. 

Between the site and the book, I have a pretty nice draft of my story that should work in a visual format. The hardest part was translating Maggie's thoughts to something an audience could see or hear. It helped a lot that I'd read some screenplays before, so I was familiar with what the final product needed to look like. Next step: sending the draft to my friend who showed interest and seeing what he has to say!

Wish me luck!

Have you ever adapted a story for the screen? Have you ever written an original screenplay? What resources helped you the most? Let's discuss in the comments!

This past weekend, my grandpa died. It’s been a hard week, especially since I haven’t seen him since before the pandemic and so I missed him already. The good news is that he’s no longer suffering from his many medical problems. So today, I want to write about what I consider the most important interaction I had with him.

My grandpa directed a gifted camp that my sister, cousin, and I attended. It was a great program that included not only academic classes but also the arts and sports. My second year of camp, we were in Oberlin, Ohio, at the university campus there. I signed up for a swimming class because even though I’d taken lessons before and understood what to do, I physically couldn’t do it. And since I was eleven, this deficit was getting embarrassing.

The first swim class, the teacher, a man around my grandpa’s age, asked us to write our names on the chalkboard by the pool. I wrote my first name only, but that’s all it took. The teacher said to stop and that he wouldn’t waste time teaching me because I’d never learn to swim. Because I was left handed.

Now, if you’ve ever gone swimming before, you know that you typically use both hands to swim. Maybe professionals consider which hand they stroke with first or something, but otherwise, it’s a very symmetrical sport. So, his comment confused me A LOT.

In fact, I thought he was joking. We all got in the pool and he had us swim down the length of the Olympic size pool and back. Naturally, as a person who cannot swim, I struggled. I barely reached the far side. He ignored me and talked only to the other students. He made it clear he wouldn’t bother with me.

That afternoon during rec hour, I went to my grandpa’s office. I understood that I held a position of privilege. I wasn’t an ordinary camper and that if I made a complaint, I was putting Grandpa in a strange position. Would he side with his granddaughter or would be wonder if I was being dramatic and whiny? I only saw my grandpa about twice a year (Christmas and camp) so I worried he wouldn’t know I wasn’t the exaggerating type.

But now I should mention my other grandpa, who wasn’t there. This one grew up in the 1920s in a farm community in Illinois. He was born left handed, like me and many members of my family. However, in his one-room schoolhouse, his teacher tied his left hand behind his back and then punished him when his right-handed handwriting wasn’t good enough. I’d heard the story many times by this point. I considered the 1920s as deep history, with many problems of the time fixed. But this incident made me wonder if the prejudice against lefties had somehow lasted, a torch of hatred carried within this one last person—my swim teacher.

I told my grandpa, the camp director, what my swim teacher had said. Why he refused to teach me. And that’s when it happened. My grandpa said he believed me. He wanted to fix this. He also made it clear this guy had a contract and even if my grandpa could dismiss him right away, he didn’t have a new teacher to replace him. This guy taught all the sports classes. So Grandpa gave me the choice to switch classes or stay and tell him anything else this guy said or did. Let me reiterate: my grandpa believed an eleven-year-old girl about a man his age, spoke to said girl like she was an adult and laid out all the issues, and then gave that child options about what she wanted to do.

I stayed in the class. I wanted to learn to swim. The TA, who coincidentally ended up marrying my second cousin years later, taught me. And the teacher eventually ignored not just me, spending more time in the sauna than the pool. By the end of camp, many kids complained about him. He refused to teach lefties in the tennis class too. Tennis. Where many champions are famously left handed. The camp flagged him, so they’d never hire him again.

In contrast, a few years later, I reported a youth minister at church for inappropriate comments and the head minister told my concerned parents that I was "just a teenage girl" and "probably made it up for drama." I was later proven right about that youth minster.

​I realize how valuable and RARE my experience with Grandpa was at camp. How much it meant that he believed me so easily, so surely. How that belief was bolstered by other complaints. His leadership in that moment taught me that leaders have to make tough decisions and walk fine lines, but transparency and the act of believing are meaningful.

So, thank you, Grandpa, for listening, believing, and teaching me many things. You are missed by so many.
 
 
This differed from what I usually post. Hope you don’t mind! Hug your loved ones if the pandemic allows.

Since the end of December, I’ve been working on my novel’s edits with the goal of querying in February. The past two weeksI sent each chapter (all 104 of them!) through ProWritingAid. (This isn’t sponsored, but imagine how much more enthusiasm I’d show if it was?) It was a grueling process, mostly because ProWritingAid takes time to load between each button, and each button reveals information to read and analyze.

​The buttons I used most were style, grammar, overused, sentence length, pronouns, and consistency. Based on the feedback ProWritingAid sent me, I accepted 675 suggestions from the software in the last two weeks. Lordy. Grammar improvements took the forefront with 493 suggestions, and 182 suggestions were style improvements, like removing passive voice and overused words.

​My most overused words (that I culled) were: had/have, could, know/knew, think/thought, and was/were. According to the software, I only overused “just” in two chapters! That’s a huge improvement from my last WIP. I also reworked many sentences to cut down on how many pronouns began sentences. Luckily, I didn’t have many consistency issues or repeated sentence starts. My biggest issue in grammar was comma placement. I’m not surprised.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t blindly accept every suggestion. In fact, I rejected most of them. Incorrect assessments of commas, incorrect assumptions about word choice and spelling, and incorrect identification of passive voice were common suggestions I ignored. This is the other part of why this took so long! If I blindly accepted across the board, my story would be a mess.

The last leg of my editing journey is a final read-through. I’m not letting myself edit anything unless I’m removing words or fixing typos. I’ve gotten it down significantly from where I started, but I’d still love to lose another 4k. We’ll see if that happens.
 

Have you used editing software in the past? What have you noticed are your editing patterns? Let’s chat in the comments!

It's 2022 and therefore time to set some annual goals. Hopefully at the end of the year I can circle back and see how I did. 

Reading Goals: 
Last year I read 31 books, most of which were in the second half of the year due to my new commute. Since I've still got that job, but I also know I have some time consuming life stuff happening this year, I'm going to aim for 45 books.

I also want to read more indie pubbed books and books by my friends this year. I hope at least 8 books of my 45 will be indies. 

As always, I want to read diversely. I'm hoping to read more female authors than male authors, and for at least 50% of the books I read to be written by people who are different from me in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, or ability.

Writing Goals:
I am working toward a very short term goal of having my WIP query-ready by February 2022. I got most of my beta feedback in December and have been editing like crazy ever since. I'm getting down to the final polish, so I think this goal is super doable. 

Send at least 5 queries every month until the end of the year or until a miracle happens and I get representation. Why only 5? I want to give myself space/time to edit the query if it ends up not working well initially. I may not be able to tell if the query is the problem or if agents are just a little behind within a month, so I'm giving myself some wiggle room here.

Continue writing my new WIP (from NaNo '21)  and have a complete first draft by August. I'm giving myself a little leeway here because goals can be great, but I hate the guilt of not meeting them. 

Continue attending my writing groups whenever possible. This includes reading ahead of time for the group that does that.

Keep up with this website. I try to post once per week, with some grace given on holidays and periods of other chaos. I love sharing about books I've read, strategies I've tried, and resources I've enjoyed. I hope you like reading about it!


​
Those are my goals for 2022 and I think they're achievable! Do you have any writing or bookish resolutions this year? Who else will be diving into the querying trenches? Let's discuss in the comments!

Sorry for the May hiatus. The month really took over and I got lost in the fray. Back to my regularly scheduled blog posts!

I keep my house relatively clean, but I always have a few nooks and crannies where I store whole bunch of stuff. Junk drawers and closet shelves and plastic drawer sets that look organized when shut, but God forbid you open them. I cleaned one such space this weekend: a set of plastic drawers I’ve had since college.

This involved two drawers of college and grad school file-folders and notebooks and a hodge-podge of random items. (Including, thankfully, a second key to my car that I’ve been looking for for about a year.) One such random item was a spiral bound “text book” from the only creative writing class I took in college. I still remember being pissed I had to pay nearly twenty bucks for what my prof called a “packet.” It’s 213 pages (front and back printed) so in hindsight twenty bucks isn’t bad for college materials.

This tome is more than half short stories I had to analyze. Sorry to those stories, I probably didn’t analyze any of them properly. Theme was never my strong suit in school. Though now I might be able to get a better grip on it, since I’ve been reading a lot of writing craft books recently. Anyway, the second part of this packet is writing advice. I opened it expecting it to be some sort of “I’m a Writing God and here are my Rules!” Instead, the first section says there are rules, but you need to learn them before you break them; and when you break them it better be on purpose. Pleased, I decided to peruse the rest.

There are sections on plot, including how to come up with a plot or get out of being stuck, character, a lot on showing and telling (with great examples and details on when to tell instead), and even revision tips. This thing has a lot boiled into a small space. And yes, we also had to buy Burroway’s Writing Fiction, which I also kept. Based on how little I highlighted, I think we only read one chapter for class. I will definitely be revisiting this packet. I put it on my writing craft shelf, even though it’s spiral bound and battered from bouncing around in my old backpack. But hey, don’t just a book—or packet—by its card-stock cover.
 

​
Did you keep any materials from high school, college, or grad school that you’ve kept and used? Let’s discuss in the comments.  

That was a long hiatus! Mostly because I was drowning in work and preparing for this workshop. Hopefully my next few posts make up for my break. Let's dive in to my review of Futurescapes!

Overview
The Futurescapes Writers' Workshop is an application-only, paid workshop that happens in approximately March. The application window is late November-early December (subject to change.) It’s been going on for several years and features teachers such as authors Mary Robinette Kowal, S.J. Kincaid, and Fran Wilde; agents such as Nephele Tempest, Tricia Skinner, and Eric Smith; and editors such as Ruoxi Chen, Deeba Zargarpur, and Priyanka Krishnan; just to name a few! These are award winning professionals. In the Before Times, the workshop was hosted at various places throughout Utah/the American Southwest, but this year it was all virtual.
 
My Experience
I heard about Futurescapes on Twitter and after reading about it, I thought there was no way this fancy workshop would accept me. I mean, these people are Hugo winners, Nebula winners, NYT Bestsellers. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. So, I applied. A few days later, I was accepted!

One bonus to being a virtual conference was the price dropped significantly. In my mind it went from “Jesus, who can afford that?” to “Well, I did get some money for Christmas.” Being virtual, it opened the door to more international attendees and those with mobility limitations. This year also offered something new in the form of classes before the workshop. Because each class cost about twice the workshop price, I only attended one. It was a good one to choose (Science Fiction with Mary Robinette Kowal, Dan Wells, and S.J. Kincaid) and connected me with other attendees, but I wish more classes had been included in the price. (One class was included, but I missed it for a family thing and the recording hasn't been sent out yet.) The class I attended also had a large number of people (30 maybe?), which made any interaction with the teachers very unlikely.

So, what was included? A three-day workshop in which I was placed in three groups. One focused on the first 3000 words of our manuscripts, a second focused on our queries, and a third focused on our synopses. The manuscripts we exchanged in advance, but the others were reviewed in the moment. This stressed out my second group leader, who wanted to give us more for our time. Workshop group sizes ranged from 6:1 to 7:1 (student: teacher ratio). There were also three Kaffeeklatches, which is basically a hang out with one faculty member in which around 60-80 students logged in. Questions were asked via the chat window to avoid chaos. The workshop was run out of Microsoft Teams, which the coordinator seemed to regret and is unlikely to be chosen again in the future. The guy coordinating it, Luke Peterson, worked really hard and it showed because there were very few hiccups in the whole thing. There were two Zoom social events, which were fun. But of course, it can be hard to get into the groove of a conversation virtually with a lot of strangers. The feedback I got was pretty thorough (especially my query! Thank you, Tricia Skinner!) and I bonded well with my manuscript group.
 

Is It Worth It?
If you want to pay for classes where you watch professionals speak on topics, but are unlikely to interact, then the All Class Pass available for the pre-workshop classes is likely to be worth it to you. If only one class speaks to you, then only paying for that class may be worth it, too. Keep in mind the All Class Pass cost a little more than two classes this year (subject to change in the future.) The workshop itself was great for connecting to writers at the same level of writing. Because the workshop has an application, it weeds out anyone who is not yet ready and therefore we had pretty similar writing quality. Everyone was also a sci-fi or fantasy writer, and my group happened to all be women about the same age. Those are connections I really hope to maintain.  However, don’t go to this workshop expecting to be paired with one faculty member of your dreams or expect your group to mesh as well as mine. It’s a big process putting groups together. If you’re only in this for one faculty member, you’re likely going to be disappointed. I was open to lots of different faculty, and when I was paired with a few I hadn’t heard of, I still got good, useful feedback. Moral of the story: don’t sell anyone short!

It may not be worth it if your internet isn't reliable. You may end up not being able to participate if your internet frequently ruins the quality of audio during your video calls. We lost one person during a session due to poor internet, and I felt very sad for them. If you are bad at focusing on video calls, especially a video class where you rarely speak, then this format may not be best suited to you. It also may not be worth it for people who don't actually want feedback and only want praise. You're going to be critiqued, and if you hate that, then don't do it.

In the future, it looks like Futurescapes will keep being virtual. Which means affordability and accessibility! They also pitched some exciting new stuff at our closing ceremony, including an award for most promising new writer. If you looked at Futurescapes in the past and have said “I wish, but the cost… the travel...” then this virtual format is probably incredibly worth it to you. If you’ve never heard of Futurescapes before and thought what I discussed sounded amazing, then look into it! There’s no harm in applying, and you might just surprise yourself.
 
I’ll make an upcoming post about some of my biggest take-aways from the conference. For now, I leave you with this—Futurescapes was worth it to me!



Thinking of applying, but not sure? Attended and want to gush about what you loved? Let's discuss in the comments!

Spent all week gathering and then acting on feedback for my piece for Futurescapes 2021. Finally clicked submit! It's been exhausting, but worth it.

Gif is not my own, obviously.