Saw Predators in theaters today. Thought it was pretty kickass, especially when compared to that awful sequel Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. A lot of good actors, a decent — although under-developed — plot, and some really tight action sequences. Although nothing too revelatory happens, you do learn a bit more about the Predator species, and there’s a nice reference to the original Schwarzenegger film. Then I was forced to watch Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, which I have to say was truly horrible. Absolutely hated it — a laughably trite plot, stereotypical characters, an overwrought conception of heaven/purgatory/gazebo-hell, and way too damn long. Really dragged.

I returned home to a whopping two rejections in my email inbox — one from Ideomancer, which was a fairly positive, kind personal letter from one of the associate editors there, which means it got past slush reader Michael Colangelo, who rejected the last two stories I sent them; and another from Weird Tales, which told me absolutely nothing other than that they wouldn’t be buying the story.

Nothing like failure to get you motivated, strangely, but I’m feeling pretty exhausted tonight. Why do I feel I have the right to be exhausted? What have I done to deserve such a chill demeanor? Well, damnit, I’ve accomplished a fair portion of my summer 2010 goals, that’s why.

I’m working on stories 11 and 12, and my word count for 2010 is at 34,843.

I’ve collected a total of 27 rejections at this point in my young career. Over a quarter of the way to 100.

I haven’t been doing too terrible in the physical fitness department either, surprisingly; I’ve actually been getting off my ass a fair bit this summer so far. I’m almost at 40% “completion” for my physical activity goals. Of course, once I get to 100 percent I’ll just keep on going to see if I can get to 200 or 300 percent before snow falls on the fields of Illinois, but weight loss is the ultimate goal. I could stand to lose some pounds, to say the least. I’ve been lifting weights, running, walking, and biking, though, so I’m on my way. And I’ve given up drinking soda regularly. I miss all that Coke and Pepsi, but it gives me something to look forward to once I’m much, much skinnier. Healthier. Sexier. For now, I deserve to be miserable and deprived in the sugars/fat/carbs department.

In the meantime, I’ve got every reason to keep on truckin right along toward these ambitious goals. Not sure my goal of 200,000 words of fiction is possible, but at this point I just need to keep producing a lot of short fiction manuscripts. Quality, in my book, is at least as important as quantity. So the story-a-week thing has gone out the window in favor of breathing life into my work. If I’m writing, revising, reading, doing administrative work such as submitting and networking, and honing my craft at pretty much all times, then I’ve got no reason to kick myself.

My current story looks to have a lot of potential. I think that it’s a pretty original convergence of unrelated ideas, and that people will find it entertaining, so I consider it a success no matter how it fares on the market. I confronted two of my personal perceived weaknesses in the writing of the story, so I’ve gained a great deal of confidence from the ordeal. Should have it finished and ready to mail within the next 3 days or so.

Wednesday’s my day off, so I’m gonna get 2 manuscripts polished and submitted, and then hopefully start researching, outlining, and perhaps even drafting my twelfth story, a cross-genre work (space opera, post-apocalyptic, steampunk, western, et cetera) based upon some ideas I had while attempting to write an epic novel in high school. Really looking forward to getting that one out of my head and down on paper, after all these years.

Overall, as I approach my 21st birthday, I find my greatest priority is just to enjoy life. I’ve been spending a lot of time with my best friend Rob, who just returned from Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training, and I’ve been giving rap and reggae a chance — been listening to rock and blues for the past 20 years, so I figured it’s probably time to try expanding my horizons. Just don’t expect me to go buying any bluegrass CDs anytime soon.

Future posts will include, among other topics, a massive article on why I dig guitarist/songwriter John Mayer, a review of Tobias S. Buckell’s Ragamuffin, a review of the Xbox 360 version of Transformers: War for Cybertron, the results of my first Writers of the Future quarter and what the experience did for me (still no word yet on how I did), and a few other surprises, I’m sure. Hopefully news of a fiction sale sometime down the road, as well.

2009

In 2009, I wrote 25,061 words of fiction.

25,061 words = 1 novelette, 1 novel chapter (abandoned work), 1 flash piece, 1 short story; 3 finished manuscripts.

That’s a good total, but it was mostly the result of only one piece I’m fairly satisfied with, and another which I’ve revised to death in an attempt to make it publishable. The flash piece was a school Creative Writing II assignment, which I’m not happy with, and the single-chapter novel beginning was trash — a mere exercise to recharge my fiction-writing batteries.

This stuff was a challenge to do for one reason: I’d been taking a break from writing. At 13, I wrote a 209-page manuscript in less than 2 months. From then on, I didn’t finish anything. Started two or three novels, abandoned them. Along the way, I created some characters, some worlds, some ideas that are still dancing about in my head — one such tale became my first Writers of the Future entry, for Quarter 2 of 2010. The results of that quarter have yet to be announced, but I have a hunch that I’ll be lucky to get an Honorable Mention. It was fun to write, and I love the damned thing, but it’s just not up to par with some of the stuff I’ve read in those anthologies. Why kid myself?

2010

On February 23, 2010, I made my first-ever manuscript submission for publication to Weird Tales, the short story I’d been working to death since, say, October ’09. It was, months later following a query, rejected.

Since then, I’ve been rejected a total of 19 times.

19 rejections in roughly a four-month period. I need to increase my output. If I can write a story a week, or even a story at least every two weeks — hell, occasionally two stories a week would be possible, but I’m sure the quality would suffer as a result.

Rejections make you want more, for editors to see your name more frequently. So you write more to compensate, and thereby increase your chances of success. If you can combat your fears of failure — irrational fears, born of myth and nay-sayers — then there’s no reason why a person can’t write like hell and eventually succeed. How much is a lot of writing, what is quality writing, and how easy success comes is both a matter of luck and subjectivity. There’s no way to really quantify it. Eventually, persistence prevails.

So far in 2010, I’ve written 30,573 words of fiction. That’s for half the year. These figures, admittedly, are slightly inaccurate due to the sole fact that the novelette listed as a 2009 piece was in fact finished in 2010, across November-January, little by little.

30,573 words = 5 short stories, 1 finished novelette, 1 abandoned longer work (probably will be eventually redrafted as a novella or novel, in the future); 6 finished manuscripts

The good news is this: by next week, my “Race Score” should be at 9; nine submissions, nine different manuscripts at nine different paying speculative fiction markets.

The bad news is this: I wasted a lot of time the last few months, as a result of the stress caused by school. College. Ugh…terrible.

My goal, then, shall be to have 40 manuscripts on the market by 2011. That could be somewhere around 200,000 words. That’s as much as two whole novels. Perhaps I shall even write a novel or two before I finish college, then; I’ve got two whole years left. Why the hell not? I’ve got nothing to lose, but everything to gain. If things go as well as they have been, school will go fine. My first semester, I ended up with something like a 3.6 GPA; the best I’ve had since, I’d say, eighth grade.

200,000 words? Can it be done? Hard to tell. Already I’ve written a fair amount, but the year’s half over. It’s going to require effort, discipline, and routine — writing must become habit. Not just ambition, the here-and-there dabbling of the unpublished amateur. I have to work toward success if I ever expect to achieve it.

If I’m going to limit myself to a goal of a measley 40 manuscripts — all for the sake of not killing myself once school starts up again — then I’m going to make sure I push myself in the direction of novella- and novel-length work at least at some point in the near future. I’m sitting on a lot of worldbuilding, a lot of ideas, but I need to hone my skills, practice the craft, and work towards mastery before I attempt the first serious novel project. It ain’t Jr. High no more, sadly. Henceforth, this is serious.

200,000 words for 2010. If it comes easily, maybe I’ll double it for 2011. Again — who knows?

I’ve decided that I’m going to set aside the How-to-Write books and obsessive online networking, et cetera, in favor of the two things that truly matter: reading and writing. My blog, therefore, is going to lean towards documenting 1) my writing progress, any successes, and how close I am to achieving my goals, and 2) writing book reviews, because I think that sort of thing is very helpful to those who may be in need of a good reading experience.

Okay, so my “Summer 2010 Fitness” plan has been officially initiated. This formerly fat, formally skinny fat kid hereby states his willingness, eagerness, and self-mandate to lose at least 40 lbs. of excess flab by the close of summer 2010 (August 31, we’ll say).

Presently — and now this shit’s getting personal — I weigh, give or take, about 210 lbs.

The weight on my driver’s license — from close to five years ago — says 141 lbs. Thanks to girlfriends past and present, a lack of willpower, and far too many trips to Applebee’s, I’ve basically lost all traces of my former obsession with working out, and my eating habits are all too American.

In high school, my T-shirts were size S. That’s SMALL, for those of you who pay attention to nothing. Now, to look less-than-ridiculous, I wear size Large. And it’s fuckin humiliating. Downright sorrowful. I used to look good, but lately I’m wondering if I could float across the Atlantic to save on boat tickets.

So, despite my absolute enmity for anything mathematical, I shall initiate a fitness plan based on percentage-of-completion. Right now, based on a freebee of 3%, which includes a trip to the driving range and whatever walking I’ve done so far this summer — a trip to the zoo, mostly — and a half-hour bike ride, I’m at 5%.

I shall outline my criteria as follows:

- full hour of walking = 1%

- full hour of running = 3%

- full hour of biking = 2%

- every 1 hr. of weightlifting = 3%

I will succeed, given these guidelines; it’s really nothing too strenuous — just the sort of stuff I used to do all the time, but now do very seldom. Due to laziness, distractions, and various other obsessions (i.e. fiction writing, which will benefit a great deal from fitness training, actually).

June 22, my best friend, Rob, will be returning home from basic training and a one-month post-B.T. stay in Oklahoma. He’s gonna be in shape; basically 400% of my own cardiac capacity. Well, shit, I don’t know math. But you get the point. I may be of fuller frame, and possibly greater overall bodily strength potential, but he’s definitely going to be kicking my ass when he gets back. Which means he has the power to be my own personal Master Yoda. He’ll hopefully beat the shit out of me, sculpting me into my former, 18-year-old self.

In other news… I should finish reading Crystal Rain any goddam day now, so maybe I’ll write a review; maybe I won’t. It’s really, really good so far.

I have received 15 rejections as of yesterday.

I have completed 2 first-draft manuscripts (one 10,000-word manuscript, one of 2,500 words) in the past two weeks, meaning I’m staying on track with my story-a-week summer goal. The 1,000 words/day part isn’t exactly going as planned, but I can fix that. I love writing, but without the privacy, time to think, et cetera, it can become difficult. What’s often most difficult is explaining your need for solitude to your partner/spouse. Ashleigh’s very supportive, but of course I always worry I’m offending her when I choose to take a night apart to work on a manuscript rather than be with her.

As is required of anyone trying to make a professional sale, I have to get more individual stories out to market. So, my current “Race Score” is at 6 — novelette S.O.G., short story T.B.D., short story T.D.S., short story T.C.O.T.F.D., and short-short story C.O.W. are all on various editors desks/computer drives across the nation/globe/galaxy. Within the next 2 weeks, for sure, it’ll be up to 8, once I get novelette L.S.B.T.W. and short story N.O.T.W. fully polished and mailed (L.S.B.T.W. to Writers of the Future, N.O.T.W. to whatever “weird tale” market doesn’t already have a story of mine on-hand). Of course, by then I’ll also have 2 more first drafts finished. By summer’s end, the world will be flooded with Alex J. Kane manuscripts.

To maintain my current goals of making a Pro Fiction Sale, losing at least 40 lbs. (or making sufficient effort to do so), and completing 1 story/week this summer, I shall make my percentage/completion for each specific project public here on my blog, therefore raising the probability of my success. I shall also do the same with my reading by having a “currently reading” status, as well as book reviews when I feel they’re appropriate — no point in reviewing, say, Ursula K. Le Guin’s classics or the works of Philip K. Dick. More likely, I’ll review the works of Tobias S. Buckell, Jay Lake, and other fairly new writers or brand-new works by established writers.

It’s probably a very good thing that, for some reason which I shalln’t investigate further, the Writers of the Future forums are down. This coming weekend will see the writing of at least three essays/research papers. School is really draining me, this week; the summer break can’t possibly come soon enough. I shall attempt to fast from the internet for the next 3-4 days, in favor of productivity and good writing (wasted on schoolwork–yuck!).

On the bright side of things, I’ve purchased Avatar, and will hopefully find time on Saturday to watch it. I also am erupting, in my heightened stress and anxiety, with countless ideas, scenes, and plot elements for my upcoming Quarter 3 Writers of the Future entry, which will be a space opera story far different in flavor from my previous effort (the status of which is still pending…I’m crossing my fingers for an Honorable Mention, let alone Semi-Finalist/Finalist). I intend to make a much more complete, organized outline and do far more research prior to writing it; I wouldn’t call it “hard” science fiction, but certainly more scientifically informed and rigorous than my previous novelette. It’s also going to have a much clearer theme.

What am I reading currently?

Star Wars: Shatterpoint by Matthew Stover

What have I read recently?

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, and Foundation by Isaac Asimov

What’s in my stack of imminent reads?

Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell, The White Plague by Frank Herbert, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed by Sean Williams, Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke, The Philip K. Dick Reader, and The Best of H.P. Lovecraft

I am forcing myself to resist the very intense urge to purchase, and play, Splinter Cell: Conviction. I was once an avid gamer, though I have now veritably given up the time-wasting hobby completely. But when I gamed regularly (no Buggers were invading the Earth, no… nothing that serious), my two favorite video game franchises prior to the Call of Duty/Modern Warfare plague were the Halo series and the Splinter Cell series. Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 3, and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory are easily the three best games I’ve ever played, though I have a nostalgic love of Halo 2 and the original Splinter Cell that transcends even the basic desire of quality.

Alas, video games are a surefire way to kill a young sci-fi writer’s career, so I abstain as best as I can. So far, things have been working out rather well. But those Conviction commercials are of a caliber that surpasses even the most bad-ass level of description.

I now have a total of three short stories and one novelette out on the speculative fiction market–”Taken by Darkness,” “The Delivery Specialist,” “The Cult of the Fire-Dragon,” and my Writers of the Future entry, the title of which I cannot yet disclose. This puts my aspirant “Race Score” at 4; not bad for someone my age who is still attending college, and also not bad for someone who has only been writing for potential submission/publication for a total of six months.

In six months, I’ve generated a 2-chapter novel beginning, which I scrapped, three finished short stories, one novelette, and two novelette beginnings which I will soon begin to finish (they probably need to be rewritten a great deal–hence their not yet being finished).

I have a couple of good short story ideas that I’ll be drafting soon, as well–one of which is based upon a story I wrote a year and half ago about a very controversial but extremely relevant scientific matter that I think would be a great fit for one of the “harder” publications–Asimov’s or Analog, both of which will be extremely worthwhile and daunting challenges that I look forward to overcoming in the months/years/decades (please, no!) ahead.

This summer, without the burden of schoolwork upon my back, I plan to write rigorously (and exercise? turn 21!) in an effort to achieve that first sale.

I am awaiting response from Weird Tales, WotF, Strange Horizons, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I have received a total of three rejections from Asimov’s and F&SF.

Nothing too ground-breaking has occured in my writing career as of late; frankly, I’ve just been too damn busy with school to really notice if anything had, anyhow.

I do, however, have two appropriate reasons for posting: First of all, I received yet another rejection slip from Mr. Stephen Mazur, “slush-pile surfer” for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, in regards to my short story, “The Delivery Specialist.” No surprise, really–I don’t much care for the story, personally, so I can only imagine how he felt about it. Who knows; maybe it will sell, eventually. I’ll likely do some minor polishing to it this weekend, then ship it off to one of the more semi-pro markets (though I am quite hesitant to do this, for obvious reasons). More than likely, I’ll send it to Strange Horizons.

I am also working on a draft-by-draft (ugh… the writing seems so bland in this one!) short story entitled “The Cult of the Fire-Dragon,” which I think could eventually achieve Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction-level grandeur–it will simply take a lot of revision. This I shall do once the exhaustion from revising my 17,000-word WotF entry wears off.

Most important of all the events this past week has been the shipping off of my first-ever entry into the quarterly L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest. I have submitted a somewhat lengthy novelette, which I am quite happy with in the context of my small body of works-in-progress (still no sales). I should know within 2 months whether or not I’ve achieved the rank of Honorable Mention, Semi-Finalist, or Finalist; then within 3 months the winners should be announced. Damn, I am anxious to hear from them.

I’ll get around to updating the bibliography page soon. I hope to make a sale sometime in the next month or so, so that I can get rid of all the “logs” and just simply advertise my first publication. God, let that happen!

I believe, truly, that my best chances of success currently lie with my second-quarter Writers of the Future entry. Time will tell. I have, fortunately and quite optimistically, already begun work on my third-quarter WotF entry, which I feel has the potential to be immensely more ground-breaking than the first, though I do love that first novelette.

First Rejection Slip - from Stephen Mazur, Editorial Assistant of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Well, folks, I finally got my first-ever official rejection slip. Stephen King admits in his memoir, On Writing, that he got sixty of these bad boys before ever getting published. Hopefully I won’t collect that many right out of the gate, but a few will only motivate me to become better. Here’s to the next five rejections!

I thought it worth noting that today at 10:03 am I made my first-ever short story submission for publication to Weird Tales. I suddenly decided, after having some more works underway, that perhaps that magazine would make a more appropriate home for that particular story. “Taken by Darkness” is a science fiction story for the most part, but is cast in the light of a horror story–inspired a great deal by my recent reading of Stephen King’s collections Just After Sunset and Night Shift. Anxious to become published, and set alight by King’s ingenious short stories, I set out to write my first horror story–somewhat of a departure from my usual preference for science fiction. But, as my story was transferred from the fairly fleshed-out draft in my head to the computer screen, I quickly saw the so-called “horror” story for what it was: another science fiction tale, only maybe a little weirder, and a little scarier. The story went through several revisions to create a more balanced, fulfilling plot progression; I think that it succeeded, at least to some extent. The ending is now far more creepy, and the reader is given a better sense of where the story is headed even after it is finished. I hope that Weird Tales decides to make the work at home, as that would mean professional publication in one of the oldest, most prestigious magazines of short horror fiction–one that began the careers of both Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft. The next six to eight weeks will tell. So, here’s to hoping!

Welcome, everyone!

It’s been awhile–KaneArts has, as of late, been a tomb of sorts, devoid of activity or substance. The reason for this is, of course, that I’ve been diligently working on several works of fiction and also attending Monmouth College to earn my Bachelor’s degree in English (concentration in Creative Writing, of course!).

To fully explain my works, I’ll first discuss my entry for Writers of the Future. This novelette has been in existence within my mind for quite some time–nearly five years, in fact. It is part of a larger universe that will first exist as several shorter works and eventually result in a somewhat larger-scale novel if my hopes come to fruition. The second draft of this 17,000-word novelette is now finished, and is being read over by several friends and professors of mine. Once I have their input and have made another–likely minor–polish of the story, I plan to enter it in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest, a quarterly competition that culminates in an annual anthology which I would love to see my work published in. If I receive no more than a rejection from this contest, I may choose to submit it elsewhere; however, I feel that WotF is certainly the place for such a story.

“Taken by Darkness” is a story the second draft of which I finished around the same time as I was about 4,000 words or so into the writing of my Writers of the Future contest entry. This story is a much darker one in my opinion, with a fairly clear set of themes which I hadn’t intended on writing into the work, but are nevertheless very much present. I hope the reader will pick up on them (there’s really ONE main theme–but anyhow), as they enrich the story. I won’t spoil the plot, but it’s a fairly horror-influenced science fiction story inspired by sidestepping science fiction for a few months to delve into the works of one of my all-time favorite fiction authors, Stephen King. It is, as far as I can presently say, finished. I hope to have it submitted to Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine very soon for consideration–then, there are always Asimov’s Science Fiction and Weird Tales.

I’ve written another story or two, and am preparing to write another novelette set in the universe of my Writers of the Future entry, but set before its timeline and on another planet (or several others).