Yay for Me!

I feel very confident over my efforts last night. I researched quite a few dark fantasy magazines and their submission guidelines and edited Dark Twisted Angel, as well as jotted down a rough outline of a new piece I am working on titled “Justine.”

So far, the five magazines I felt were worth saving in my favorites are Aeon, The Willows, Fantasy Magazine, Wicked Hollow, and Realms of Fantasy.

In addition, after much debate I submitted Dead Dreams for review on www.zoetrope.com and got two reviews back. I was so afraid they would eat me alive and chew my story up and spit it out. It was all right though. I experienced great responses and am rather proud of my first-born. There weren’t even that many grammar mistakes, and grammar is not my forte!

The Hook!

The past weeks my focus has been about chapter one, and when I had it finished, ha ha, I posted it on editred.com for some friendly critiquing. I like to get other author’s opinions especially ones that have progressed farther than me on this road and I learned that I have no hook. I had worked so hard on introducing my character that I had forgotten to introduce the plot. This is where you role your eyes back into your head and shake it in the same manner you would at a foolish child. I did have conflict, but chances are the reader would have put it down before they got to the end of the chapter. Ok I am a little hard on my work, they were not that mean about it, but I do not have to spare my own feelings, and the problem was easily enough fixed. I dwelled on it all night and came to a solution, add a prologue that will pull the reader in and make them curious enough to want to learn the things I am telling them. I am rather happy with this solution, I wrote an outline for the prologue before I fell asleep (well, I couldn’t fall asleep till I wrote it, my body doesn’t let me sleep when my mind is that awake and when I can see the scene in my head that means I am not sleeping.)


All that is left to do is find some quite time (a precious commodity indeed) so that I may work on wording it so that it paints the picture I see in my head. Considering my four-year-old daughter that is very hyperactive is bouncing off the walls pretending she is the next American Idol, the quiet time is not happening. Instead, I decided to use my time on a different venue. Creating my beautiful website, joining zoetrope and making this wonderful Blog, as well as requesting several books in the dark fantasy genre to read up on authors and familiarize myself with who publishes and edits books of a similar nature to mine. Supper is done cooking and Dora is over so I must be going.