O | The Online Writing Workshop for SF & F Newsletter, November 2002 W | http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com W | Become a better writer! | - - CONTENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | - Workshop News: New Feature: Lifetime Reviewer Recognition Horror Workshop to Merge Back into SF/F Under-reviewed submissions update OWW T-shirts December writing challenge News Notes: Award, Market, Article Membership payment information - Editors' Choices for October submissions - Reviewer Honor Roll - Publication Announcements - Workshop Statistics | - - WORKSHOP NEWS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | NEW FEATURE: LIFETIME REVIEWER RECOGNITION To recognize and reward the most prolific reviewers in the workshop, we will soon begin displaying either one, two, or three bees (as in "busy bees") after their names. Anyone who has contributed 50-149 total reviews will be recognized as an Prolific Reviewer with one bee. 150-349 total reviews will earn Veteran Reviewer status with two bees. 350 or more total reviews will earn the coveted three bees of the Master Reviewer. Only nine workshop members currently qualify for this final category! Besides giving seasoned reviewers the recognition they deserve for contributing a huge number of reviews, these designations allow new members to recognize some of our experienced reviewers at a glance. While we can't promise that quantity equals quality, or that all experienced reviewers will always give helpful reviews, this usually seems to be the case. (The most active reviewers frequently are nominated to the Reviewer Honor Roll, for example.) To arrive at our initial reviewer levels, we had to base the "total reviews contributed" on review points plus current submissions. We realize that because of the two-point reviews this is an inflated number, but we were not tracking total reviews contributed before, so we had to start somewhere! As of the launch of this feature, of course, we are tracking not only review points but also total reviews contributed (and reporting them on the "Your Info" page as well). If you have submitted far more often than is usual in the workshop, and feel that your initial reviewer level is thus unfairly low, let us know at support@onlinewritingworksop.com and we'll see what we can do. HORROR WORKSHOP TO MERGE BACK INTO SF&F On December 1st or shortly thereafter, the Online Writing Workshop for Horror will merge back into OWW's SF&F workshop. Horror members will keep their review points and submissions, and receive full credit for the remainder of their memberships. A new "horror" category will be created for the combined workshop to help all members find and critique horror submissions. OWW-Horror opened in May, 2001, splitting off from the SF&F workshop at the request of members. Membership and activity peaked in June, 2001, with 155 active members, over 100 submissions, and more than 400 reviews, and we waited to see if the workshop would sustain a critical mass that would enable it to thrive. But it hasn't. While we know many members have benefited, the number of members and the level of participation has dropped so low that we don't feel we're giving good value for money. So we decided that Horror members would be better served by merging the two workshops together again. We expect to continue providing separate Editor's Choice reviews for horror submissions, as members have found them very valuable. Any questions about the merge process may be addressed to: support@onlinewritingworkshop.com The address of the new combined workshop will continue to be: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com UNDER-REVIEWED SUBMISSIONS UPDATE We want to thank everyone who continues to help out their fellow workshoppers by using the under-reviewed submissions link. The bonus rotation includes all submissions more than three days old with zero reviews, those more than one week old with only one review, and those more than two weeks old with only two reviews. During the first month of use, the number of under-reviewed submissions dropped from a daily average of 125 to 88 -- but now it's holding steady in that same range. This represents around 12% of all workshop submissions, so we hope it will come down further. If you have any other questions about this new feature or any other concerns about reviews, e-mail support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com OWW T-SHIRTS We have a few unclaimed T-shirts left that people ordered but never paid for. The following colors and sizes are available on a first-come, first-served basis: M white, M gray, L white, L gray The cost is $16.50 per shirt including postage, and we'll accept checks or Paypal. E-mail support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com with your order or with any questions. If we print more T-shirts, the price will probably go up a bit, so if you want one, act now! http://www.onlinewritingworkshop.com/art/newlogo.html DECEMBER WRITING CHALLENGE The mailing list's December Writing Challenge is "Blindness." Now, this doesn't have to be literal. But here's the trick. No visual description. Your character may be sighted or may not, but he/she/it should be noticing things in ways other than through their eyes. All other senses are legal. You may even cheat and make up new senses. But no visual spectrum description is allowed in this story, scene, or vignette. Workshop challenge stories have resulted in sales for more than a few members (there are three more in this month's "Sales & Publications" section) so join in and have fun. For more information on the challenges, visit http://www.thermeon.net/checkered/Challenge.html. NEWS NOTES We should have mentioned this months ago, but The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy received a Big Brain Award for 2002 from Dr. Brain's Laboratory (http://doctorbrain.tripod.com). This award was given to nine outstanding educational Web ssites for quality of information, ease of use, and enjoyability, as well as design that takes advantage of the capabilities of the Web to create an exciting educational experience. A resurgent Planet Relish E-zine, with workshopper Steve Hallberg as the new Science Fiction Editor, is once again accepting submissions. Guidelines are at http://www.planetrelish.com/submission.html with a re-launch date of January, 2003. Marg Gilks mentions the workshop in her article "Fundamentals of Fiction: Critique Groups and Writers' Groups," which can be found online at Writing-World.com (http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/fiction03.html). MEMBERSHIP PAYMENT INFORMATION How to pay: In the U.S., you can pay by PayPal or send us a check or money order. Outside of the U.S., you can pay via PayPal (though international memberships incur a small set-up fee); pay via Kagi (www.kagi.com--easier for non-U.S. people); send us a check in U.S. dollars drawn on a U.S. bank (many banks can do this for you for a fee); or send us an international money order (available at some banks and some post offices). If none of those options work for you, you can send us U.S. dollars through the mail if you choose, or contact us about barter if you have interesting goods to barter (not services). Scholarship fund and gift memberships: you can give a gift membership for another member; just send us a payment by whatever method you like, noting who the membership is for and specifying whether the gift is anonymous or not. We will acknowledge receipt to you and the member. Or you can donate to our scholarship fund, which we use to fully or partially cover the costs of an initial paying membership for certain active, review-contributing members whose situations do not allow them to pay the full membership fee themselves. Bonus payments: The workshop costs only 77 cents per week, but we know that many members feel that it's worth much more to them. So here's your chance to award us with a bonus on top of your membership fee. For example, is the workshop worth a dollar a week to you? Award us a $12 bonus along with your membership fee. 25% of any bonus payments we receive will go to our support staff, sort of like a tip for good personal service. The rest will be tucked away to lengthen the shoestring that is our budget and keep us running! For more information: Payments: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships.shtml Bonus payments: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/bonuspayments.shtml About our company: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/bonuspayments.shtml Price comparisons: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/memberships_comparison.shtml | - - EDITORS' CHOICES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | The Editors' Choices are chosen from the submissions from the previous month that show the most potential or otherwise earn the admiration of our Resident Editors. One submission in each of three categories -- SF, F, and short stories -- is given a detailed review, meant to be educational for others as well as the author. Reviews are written by our Resident Editors, award-winning authors and instructors Kelly Link and Nalo Hopkinson, or occasionally other writing pros. Close contenders for EC will be listed here as runners-up but usually won't get a review. The last four months of Editors' Choices and their editorial reviews are archived on the workshop. To view them, go to the "Read, Rate, Review" page and click on "Editors' Choices" in the Submission Selector. Congratulations to this month's Editors' Choice authors! Editor's Choice, Fantasy Chapter/Partial Chapter: AS WITH CAGES CHAPTER 11-12 (10-11) by Amber van Dyk This piece shows a lot of promise. The writing is frequently beautiful and quite evocative. Amber is good at setting a mood, and the situations are described in ways that feel fresh. However, there are stylistic quirks that are overused, and they confuse me as a reader and give the writing a sameness of feel that quickly becomes exasperating. Multiple scenes from different points of view all had the same mood of melancholy, moved at the same speed, and were described in similar ways. The style that should be working to make this novel interesting is instead being hammered into the ground. I had a lot to say about this excerpt--please bear with me. I felt that it was worth it to take the time, because it's potentially such a strong piece, and in many ways its strengths are mirrored in its weaknesses. I was often confused when reading these chapters. For example, the opening two sentences--from "seven o'clock in the morning" to "Elizabeth sat"--set a lovely mood, but they are labored and to my mind, unnecessarily difficult to parse. Here's another awkward one: "Opened, crisp folds, interrupted now by tiny tears, put together backwards, their forms fat and awkward." It's not a complete sentence, for one thing, though that's not perforce a problem; the real problem is that it's confusing. You seem to be saying that the "crisp folds" are "put together backwards," and that their forms are "fat and awkward." Or maybe you're saying that the tears are put together backwards and fat and awkward? Or perhaps the maps? Iım working too hard here. Donıt sacrifice meaning or clarity for style. There are reference problems with the way that you're choosing to write description both here and in the opening two sentences. My suggestion is that you keep the beauty and the sense of mood, but that you modify it stylistically just a bit in order to have more clarity. Give us more sentences like the following: "An orange pen that smelled like fruit traced highways and rest stops, across one border and another, land of sleet, land of snow, land of springtime." Except that after "another" I would put a semi-colon, not another comma. Then you continue, in the same tense in which you began the excerpt, with "In the dream, she saw a road sign." But she's not dreaming. You've just said that she's awake and sitting up. Was the dream a previous event? If so, you need to change the tense to reflect that: "In the dream, she HAD SEEN a road sign." (One of the most frequent mistakes I see in fiction writing is the inaccurate use of the past tenses, especially the past pluperfect.) The description of the road sign is lovely and quite dynamic: "strange-angle tilt, dry sand, sprout of weed along its ground post. The arrow pointing one way. This way. You must go this way. Or that way then, later, in the other direction, a thousand miles away and beyond. Farther away than here." Yet the incomplete sentence that follows loses me completely in its twists and turns: "Farther away than the fork in the road that leads this way or then that way in the land of dreams, of springtime." In this sentence, "The last dark of morning light strangled by the white glare of the refrigerator as the light snapped on, Elizabeth's senses assaulted by the strange smell of old fruit," I had to re-read "the last dark of morning light" a few times in order to make sense of it, and I'm still not convinced by it. I'm also not sure about "the smell of old fruit" here, but that may be just me. Because you used the smell of fruit so effectively in the previous paragraph about the orange ink of the pen smelling like fruit, it feels like too much repetition to have the smell of fruit again. Yet it immediately conjured up Elizabeth's 'fridge for me using the sense of smell, which is an easy one to neglect. Both choices -- the fruity smell of the pen and the fruity smell of the 'fridge -- seem like strong ones to me; just perhaps too similar to each other. Later: "Elizabeth leaned against the counter, her feet warm in fuzzy blue slippers. More silver stars, sequined glitter." Where are these silver stars and sequined glitter? On her slippers? I think you should tell us. Donıt be so sparse in your description that your readers are uncertain of what you want them to picture. On the other hand, here the sparseness and disjunctiveness worked for me: "In the dream. Directions like flare guns, roads that went straight on to morning." It did a good job of invoking the kind of one-shot flashback you can have of a dream. The following is what Bruce Sterling and the Turkey City Lexicon call a "not simultaneous" error: "Closing the door, she poured a glass of juice from a container that hadn't left the countertop." What you're saying is that Elizabeth was simultaneously closing the door and pouring juice from a container that had been on the countertop. Do you really mean that both her actions were simultaneous? If so, I need more description in order to envision how that was possible. I'm also confused about what's going on. Why does she open the 'fridge, but then take juice instead from a container that is on a countertop? Which countertop? Where is it? And I presume that the juice is warm, rather than the cold juice that might be in the 'fridge? I *think* I understand what's going on here, but I'm having to deduce a lot. I need a little more description. Vivid description here: "Grapefruit. Odd pink with pulp that stuck to the edge of the glass and took two tries to wash away." I know this juice. I've drunk this juice. I've tried to wash the dried pulp of this juice off my own drinking glasses! Reference problem: "Leaning against the tub surround, strange and old, it pulled away from the caulking and away from the wall, strange mildew line in and gone behind the plastic." I think I understand most of what you're trying to say, but that's not what you're saying. You need a more comprehensible way of re-phrasing. Whatıs the subject of the sentence? I got lost here: "where the man with the requisite long hair divined the sound of the cash register to girls barely old enough to drive." What does "divined the sound of the cash register to girls" mean? Now we move on to some more specific line-level nits. You say that Grizelda was "swearing at the Subway cup in the gutter." That reference is going to be incomprehensible to anyone who doesn't know that a Subway is not only a means of underground travel, it's also a fast food chain. That's a lot of people to leave in the dark. Oops! Grizelda starts picking up litter in the street without first getting out of the car. This is picturesque: "The house was painted a strange shade of evergreen, had a pine pull bell with a schoolyard ding, had [a] rocking chair on the porch, you could barely see from the curb, had bushes one could bury their past in." But "you could barely see from the curb" threw me because it broke your symmetry. What is it that you could barely see from the curb? Sometimes your commas would do better as periods, like so: "Grizzy turned the knob once, and again[. I]t resisted and released, opened with a stiff snap[. I]t was only locked unless you knew its secrets." I don't get why the word "yet" sets these two ideas in opposition against each other: "Heda answered, strange German lisp and butchered English, yet she made fine coffee." You're implying that because she's German and her English isn't fluent, she would be expected to make bad coffee? And now back to a few general observations. I find you generally overfond of making up compound adjectives such as "giant-tall;" "brown-bottled," and "shatter-blue." They are evocative and compact, but too many of them dilutes the effect. If you do a search through your manuscript for hyphens, you'll see how often your created compound adjectives crop up. Here's one paragraph where you use that construction five times. It's too much of a good thing: "Dinner was served on old china, plates with *raw-chipped* edges that left marks like chalk. Outlines. *Runny-red* pasta stains and dreams of love and other things were washed clean in the laundry, in the machine that spun and clanked as if in orbit. *Soggy-wet* outsides, and insides, they washed jeans with holes in the knees and worn out underwear that dripped *lemon-scented* rain on the concrete floor of the basement. They dried their clothes once with papery slips that smelled like rainforests, and again on the line; the dryer *third-hand* old, from a different solar system than the washer." You also tend to overuse the same thing without the hyphen: "crispwhite," "bluesky," and "woodswing." Describing actions with a list of impressions or sensations, rather than with whole sentences, is another technique thatıs effective in moderation but overused here. Here's an example of what I mean: "Turn of bolt, soft click, jump, oil on the tip of her fingers, new or old she didn't know, but when she pulled, the door opened differently. Woodswing out, beckoning in the sunshine and wind, the smell of new leaves and beyond that, the scent of drying puddles and barbequed meat." It's lovely, but you've used that technique many times in a relatively short excerpt. It creates a sameness of texture to your writing that quickly gets wearisome. That's a pity, because it's potentially a powerful technique for description. In the paragraph I quoted above, it could have been a great technique for describing how Nyx perceives the world, since she is blind. But because you've used it so often before for sighted people, it doesn't have any punch left. From here I wanted to want to read on, but without any shift in texture, I didn't feel compelled to. The characters weren't distinguishing themselves sufficiently and the situations, different from each other though they were, had the same emotional feel to them. I also couldn't get any sense of plot drawing together. Now, I'm pretty sure that they aren't random vignettes, that you are in fact working towards some kind of story arc, but it's as yet invisible. Despite all this, though, I think this piece can work! I think that you are stylistically talented, and I would urge you to think through the implications and meanings of your statements on a micro level (i.e. just because someone has a German accent doesn't mean she'll make bad coffee. You probably don't think so either, but you phrased your sentence in a way that implied so). Then I'd urge you to use your command of writing to to make the mood or feel of your scenes more varied. Some scenes will want to move more quickly than others, for instance. Lastly, please don't wear out the descriptive techniques of which you seem most fond. We'll like them the more if you save them for where they will have the most impact. --Nalo Hopkinson http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/ Short story collection SKIN FOLK now available from Warner Books Editor's Choice, SF Chapter/Partial Chapter: GOD'S DNA (CHAPTER 5) by Arnold Schwartz For this chapter, I want to begin with nits and end with overall comments. You write: "A code resembling basic mathematics has been discovered in the DNA of selective individuals." That should be "selected," not "selective." "Selective" means that the people who have the code in their DNA are choosy. I know that this is very near future, but I did find myself wondering at the currency of some of the expressions you use; for instance, the pun on "fold, mutilate or spindle," and the joke about "circle gets the square." To me, those place the piece very much in the late 20th century. By 2015, will we still be referencing those particular items of contemporary 20th C. culture? I don't know, but it did make me hesitate every time I came across that kind of historical reference. You write, "The Director of Health and Human Services calling her at two thirty in the morning. This can't be good. What did she do, or not do, now?" That last sentence is in the wrong tense. It should be, "what had she done, or not done, now?" You say, "Brook's words had come quick and stiff." Those two adjectives need to be adverbs. The words themselves had been quick and stiff (i.e. adjectives), but you're describing how they'd been delivered. In other words, you're modifying a verb, so you need adverbs: "Brook's words had come quickly and stiffly." You write, "as if he were reading from a memo." I believe it should be "as though." You've thought very carefully about what things are like in your 21st-century North America. That's a good thing, but sometimes your descriptions feel a bit labored. An example: "After a quick shower and a breast-image scan..." It's good to know that this world has instituted commonly used preventative measures for breast cancer (especially since it's at such high proportions in our own world), but inserted here, it feels didactic. There might be other places or ways that you could put that detail in where it would feel smoother. Renzo sees Ellen and says, "This can not be. You are much too young and attractive to be the Director of the GenBank." Immediately I distrust and dislike him because he's using empty flattery. I'd be thinking, what does he want? In fact, later on, Ellen herself thinks, "he's flirting with me. What does he want?" Too, he's flattering in a manner that the person he's trying to flatter might not find appealing at all. He's implying that only old, ugly people are smart enough to be directors of GenBanks. He's also implying that youth and beauty usually render one incapable of holding important positions. I'm presuming that Ellen's pretty smart. If I were her, I'd be assessing him as not only manipulative, but dumb in the way that he goes about it. Is this how you want us to read him? Renzo says to Ellen, "Well, then, my apologies for not recognizing you." But why should he have recognized her if he's never seen her before? Renzo says, "No, wait. I am terrible sorry." Yet you've just said that his English is flawless. So he should say, "I am terribly sorry." When Renzo first asks Ellen to limit access to the Adam sequences, her response is that it contravenes Freedom of Information laws. Yet once she agrees to do it, she seems to have no concern for her legal liability, only for how angry the scientific community will be when they find out. On top of that, her boss is also encouraging her to break the law, and the other repositories of the Adam sequence have agreed to do so as well. This is all quite possible, but I doubt that it would be done so casually. It's a conspiracy to commit a crime at a pretty high level. I need a little bit more to convince me. On a line-by-line level, this was pretty clean text, and the story cleanly told. As far as storycraft goes, the characterization feels wooden to me at this point. People are flat, and the jokes feel like I've heard them before, especially the one about the more incredible of the tabloid stories actually being true. Character motivations aren't quite convincing yet, and seem designed mostly to get the plot from one place to the next. As far as description goes, it's clear that you've thought a lot about how people manipulate the world. I have a good sense of how technology such as e-mail and showers have progressed. This is excellent. Yet the world doesn't feel fully inhabited yet, with all the five senses. What does a breast scanner sound like, feel like? How does Ellen's coffee taste? What do the sheets on her bed feel like? And so on. I want to feel as though I'm in this world along with Ellen, not witnessing it from the outside. I just barely made it through first year-biology and failed all the other sciences, so I can't comment on the soundness of your science, except to say that I found the idea intriguing enough that I would continue to read on, at least for a bit. --Nalo Hopkinson http://www.sff.net/people/nalo/ Short story collection SKIN FOLK now available from Warner Books Runner-Up, Short Story: "A Treasure and a Dinner" by Villy Ellinger In celebration of Halloween, a gruesome and playful bagatelle. The first-person plural voice is engaging, and the concept of Body, and Charm, especially, is a nice, weird detail. There are lots of funny flourishes, like the first sentence: "We finally make it out of the box." And "We know that curiosity is perilous and has already caused the death of a cat, if we recall correctly, but since we are already dead..." Occasionally these flourishes seem more cute than clever: the title and closing line are not as strong as the premise of the story. You might consider a slightly longer story, in which the real meat concerns the possible rift between Body and Charm -- begin with the misunderstanding between the narrator and the graverobber, and then progress to a quarrel between our narrator(s) over who the Baroness loves best. --Kelly Link http://www.kellylink.net/ Short story collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN available from Small Beer Press Runner-Up, Short Story: "Eudora's Song" by PJ Thompson Like the other stories set in and around Dos Lunas County, this submission was an enjoyable read. But while Eudora should be an engaging narrator, the real hearts of the story were Mrs. Wiskowicz's embroidered samplers and the way in which water metaphors ran through the narrative. The flow of the story is significantly impaired by the chatty, syrup-slow narration: choose your details and your secondary characters carefully. Vince, for example, does nothing that engages us. Make sure that your dialogue (and Eudora's observations: "Smooth, real smooth. Somebody had raised this boy right.") feels like real people talking -- many of the conversations here lapse into exchanges of TV-speak cliché. One of the hard things about linked stories is keeping the right balance between new characters and the casts of previous stories. If I had not read earlier stories, I would have little feeling for JK. Your work in this story is to keep him fresh -- make the serial reader see him in a new light while also engaging new readers. Even for the serial reader, however, JK's family, their magical proclivities, and his previous history with Eudora feel a bit too pat: the ghostly appearance of his grandfather is way over the top. I'd suggest cutting out his family entirely, and adding Mrs. Wiskowicz, the maker of samplers. Also, at the moment, this is terribly cozy fiction. Nobody in this story is threatened, or hurt, or even seems to feel things deeply. It's okay -- it's even pleasant -- to read a story, every once in a while, where nobody suffers, but you also have to make us care about these characters. Think of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's work. Make Eudora and JK real -- make them vulnerable to the world, and to each other (as Eudora says, you have to live in the real world). Make the conflict of the story two things: the age difference between Eudora and JK -- the reason she always leaves her loves is that if she didn't, she'd have to watch while they grew old and died -- and the fact that they're both sirens and flirts. Maybe they love each other, but are always catching someone else's eye. Consider the opening of the story: Eudora knows things about people that nobody else knows. But what does she eventually find out about JK? That he can see dead people isn't enough; we already know that. And add water -- yes, more water! Eudora should always be in a claw-foot bath whenever JK comes over, and maybe she keeps a hip-bath behind the bar, to stand in; there should be thunderstorms, singing in the rain, and yes, skinny-dipping. --Kelly Link http://www.kellylink.net/ Short story collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN available from Small Beer Press Editor's Choice, Short Story: "A Liar is Always Lavish of Oaths" by Nick Carmine This is a sly, politically-engaged piece of fiction. It's also genuinely moving: the author has found a nice balance between satirical and character-driven fiction. The writing is polished and perfectly pitched in tone towards the subject matter. I'm a little reminded of some of Ted Chiang's stories. The narrator is stiff, awkward, unlikable, and yet also engaging; secondary characters like Annette and Rico are also entirely successful. Even the goofy, throwaway line about the President's "famously difficult" relationship with his miniature schnauzer, Archie, carries more weight that it seems to at first read. This is a world a little like ours -- it's just enough like ours, and just enough askew to throw us off-balance, in the way that really good sf always throws us off-balance. The details are low-key and perfect: Ted's therapist, who uses "rural-colloquialism-confrontation therapy"; his handwriting, worked on until it bears "all the trademarks of a down-to-earth, thoughtful, modest person"; the other employees at his first job who glide "past Ted in the halls. On weekends they took trips to foreign countries or went to cultural events. They went rock-climbing or got married or wrecked their cars or bought new ones"; Ted's mantra, the refrain of the story -- "The pain of this moment is only temporary." Other fantastic details: the note taped to Ted's door after he is fired, which begins "Dear Ted, Are you thinking of committing an act of mass terror because of your recent termination? Don't!"; the interview at the Employment Office: "Your hobbies are... taking drugs and watching television." "Yes." "You also enjoy taking drugs and listening to music." "That's correct." "If you had to choose..." "I would go with the television." "That's fine, absolutely fine," the Officer said. A few small nitpicks: this story needs a few commas. The sentence "Stan was an overweight middle-aged man with a beard who seldom bathed" might lead a grammatically-picky reader to believe that it was the beard who never bathed. Beware the use of the word "amid": like the word "atop", it drives some editors crazy. Settle for the more commonplace "with". And I would cut "and started working downstairs" from the sentence "Which is how Ted became a Monitor." "...the combination of alcohol and pills made him sleepy" is slightly better than "the alcohol combined with the pills to make him sleepy." I would also consider toning down the Secretary of Defense's language -- telling us that "We're going to find the last of these cowards and kill them" is probably slightly too strong for the tone of the story. You can find a subtler way to let us know that what happens to people like Melody, and her family, is very, very bad. Use "ground" instead of "grinded." I would delete "for example" from the sentence "It would be fifty years, for example, before anyone could set foot in Manhattan again." It seems a bit too calculatedly off-hand. Finally, I would cut the sentences "He knew she'd be good for him. It had been so long since he'd had a day end like this." You don't need to be this explicit -- trust that the paragraph is already telling the reader everything necessary. Those sentences interrupt the dreamlike feel that you've established. Please note that I'm offering all of these close-text suggestions because the story is already so good. I don't have larger meta-criticisms. This is a wonderful story which improved on every subsequent read, and I hope you're planning to put it in the mail very soon -- try Gordon Van Gelder or Ellen Datlow. --Kelly Link http://www.kellylink.net/ Short story collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN available from Small Beer Press | - - REVIEWER HONOR ROLL - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | The Reviewer Honor Roll area of the workshop recognizes members who have given useful, insightful reviews. After all, that's what makes the workshop go, so we want to give great reviewers a little well-earned recognition! (Some months we also award a prize to a special reviewer.) If you got a really useful review and would like to add the reviewer to the Reviewer Honor Roll, just use our online honor-roll nomination form--log in and link to it from the bottom of the Reviewer Honor Roll page at http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml. Your nomination will appear on the first day of the next calendar month. This month's Reviewer MVP is Bret Ludwig, who will receive a copy of THE LADY OF THE SORROWS, Book 2 of _The Bitterbynde_ trilogy, by workshop alum Cecilia Dart-Thornton (http://www.dartthornton.com). Here is Bret's winning nomination: Reviewer: Bret Ludwig Submission: THREE DAYS. pt2. (3699 word partial chapter) by nick butterworth Submitted by: nick butterworth Nominator's Comments: Putting his comments within the text in brackets made for an easy to follow critique and saved me having to track his comments separately. His attention to detail blew me away and I couldn't help but agree with a lot of his points. Stuff I thought I had got nailed, he took apart. He was right too. I found his style non-aggressive and understanding. Top marks for Bret. I'll be looking at all of his stuff from here on in. The Honor Roll will show all November nominations beginning December 1. Some advance highlights from the November honor roll: Reviewer: David Moore Submission: SOULWRANGLER - CHAP 3 - *REVISED* by Nathalie Rochon Submitted by: Nathalie Rochon Nominator's Comments: That reviewer must have spent hours going through my 3rd chapter. Even if he hadn't read the first 2, he hit the nail on the head on most of his comments. Plus, there's almost as much text in the review as in the chapter itself! We need more reviewers like David. Reviewer: Christiana Ellis Submission: Blood of a Human -2 by Ilona Gordon Submitted by: Ilona Gordon Nominator's Comments: A great review and a great reviewer. Christiana went through the submission, telling me exactly how she felt at the key points of narrative. She pointed out the specifics while still telling me what she felt I was trying to accomplish with this chapter. An invaluable review. Thanks, Christiana! All nominations received in October can be still found through November 30 at: http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com/honorroll.shtml | - - PUBLICATION ANNOUNCEMENTS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | We can't announce them if you don't let us know! So drop Charlie a line at support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com whenever you have good news to share. Sales and Publications: It was a great month for member sales! Siobhan Carroll reports another sale to Canada's premier SF magazine: "Thanks in no small part to the wonderful critters of the OWW, my short story 'Morning in the House of Death' has been accepted for publication in a 2003 issue of _On Spec_." Her last story there, "A Killer of Men," won Honorable Mention in THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR anthology. She adds: "On a random tangent, I just came from a judging session for a short story competition run by a respectable literary review, and most of the creative-writing-grad stories I was looking at would have benefited from a week on the OWW. This site is simply _the_ best online resource I know of for aspiring writers. Thanks for the great work!" Chris Clarke sold his short story "The Corruption of Sebastian Menard" to Gothic.net (http://www.gothic.net). It'll appear in the December issue. He originally wrote this for the mailing list's anagram challenge. Wendy Delmater's story "Passenger Side" will be appearing in the TO DIE FOR anthology, edited by C. Scavella Burrell. And she pinched herself and sent us this note: "Editor Mary Collins of _Survivor Wit_ had this to say about my series in her biweekly newsletter: 'I did move this one up in the queue a bit...do you want (a story) in every issue for a while? I like the series and your writing a lot, so I will do my best to accommodate what you want to do.'" Wendy informs us that she'll be coming up with a lot of stories. Stella Evans sold "The Dragon Wife" to _The Fortean Bureau_ for their November issue (http://www.forteanbureau.com). She's so busy being a doctor and a new mom, she only had enough time to add: "This story is a workshop graduate." But we understand. Nora Fleischer sold "Vaudeville" to the new magazine _As of Yet Untitled_. She wrote enthusiastically: "My first paying story! I'd like to thank Melinda Kimberly, Kathryn Allen, John McMullen, and John Walsh of the SFF workshop, and Kevin Miller of the Horror workshop. They told me that the first scene needed to be extended (and made more 'vaudeville'), and they got me to describe my heroine's track marks more clearly. I heard about this on the same day as my Editor's Choice selection. All in all, it was a great day for my writing!" Cathy Freeze sold her snakelady story "Cold Blood" to Gothic.net (http://www.gothic.net). It's her first pro sale -- congratulations! She told the mailing list: "Thank you so much to the list, especially the biology-pro who helped me with details about women who collect specimens out in the wild! Oh, and hey, I owe the list for the story's creation, too. I wrote it for the elf challenge, lo those many months ago." Steve Hallberg's story "Tetley's Time Travel Emporium" (EC in October 2000 and originally published in the December 2000 _Planet Relish E-Zine_) has been included in _Return to Planet Relish: The Best of Planet Relish E-Zine_ (http://www.planetrelish.com), a retrospective chosen by publisher and former editor Mark Rapacioli. Steve's new position as the Science Fiction Editor at Planet Relish actually worked against his story's inclusion. He copied this part of the acceptance to us: "If you weren't on staff, I would've snapped it up more quickly. In the end, though, I realized...the story *belonged* in the retrospective. It was clearly one of the best SF stories I'd published." Debra Kemp's short story "In My Father's Wake" has also been accepted for the TO DIE FOR anthology. Dena Landon sold "Healer's Arrows" to _Glyph_. It's appearing in the November issue. Bill O'Dea, winner of the last year's Serendip writing contest, has sold his story "Fish Run" to _Quantum Muse_ (http://www.quantummuse.com). Last year, an earlier version of this story entitled "Salmon Run" was a runner-up for Editor's Choice. Bill told us: "Thanks for all your support. Without this Web site, my skills would be much, much lower." Jon Paradise sold "The Girl with the Butterfly Tongue" to Ideomancer (http://www.ideomancer.com). He tells the workshop: "Thanks for providing the environment to help me grow it!" Chelsea Polk sold "Le Bel Homme Sans Merci" to _Absinthe Literary Review_ (http://www.absinthe-literary-review.com) for their November 1 Eros & Thanatos issue. She mockingly complains: "And I printed the darn thing to send to another market as soon as they _rejected_ it..." Sarah Prineas's flash story "The Dragons of Fair D'Ellene" appears at Ideomancer (http://www.ideomancer.com). Sarah notes, "I'm thrilled to be sharing the ToC page with two authors I admire very much: James Allison and Stephen Dedman." Marlin Seigman's story "Dust Came Down" will appear in the IDEOMANCER UNBOUND anthology alongside writers like Jack Dann and other workshoppers like Meredith L. Patterson and Charles Coleman Finlay. "Dust Came Down" is a former Editor's Choice. Amber van Dyk sold her flash piece "One Time, One Place" to StoryHouse, the coffee can people. This was part of the "rats in bad places" writing list challenge which led to several sales. Amber helpfully informs us: "I workshopped it 'n everything :)" Steve Westcott's RELUCTANT HEROES is now available through Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/184386021X/qid%3D1036749798/202-273 Steve told us this about his first novel: "The book is due out in February and I doubt whether I would have got that far without all the helpful advice and crits on the workshop. It was one of the best moves I made when I first joined the old Del Rey site, some four years ago." | - - WORKSHOP STATISTICS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | Number of members as of 11/20: 600 paying, 91 trial Number of submissions currently online: 694 Percent of submissions with 3 or more reviews: 72% Percent of submissions with zero reviews: 2.3% Number of submissions in October: 475 Number of reviews in October: 2182 Ratio of reviews/submissions in October: 4.59 Estimated average word count per review in October: 612 Number of submissions in November to date: 262 Number of reviews in November to date: 1127 Ratio of reviews/submissions in November to date: 4.30 Estimated average word count per review in November to date: 570 | - - FEEDBACK - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - | Send your feedback to support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com See you next month! The Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction and Fantasy http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com support@sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com | - - Copyright 2002 Online Writing Workshops, LLC - - - - - - - - -|
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