Riviting Reviews
Changes Coming
So keep an eye out here for a multitude of updates in the next week or so as I shift and post and repost just to get things here instead of there.
Thanks for your patience and I hope it all turns out yummy!
Titular Troubles
Names, names, names.
One thing I have heard over and over in the writing community is that naming your work is hard. It’s rough coming up with a catchy title, something that not only snags the attention of the fickle reader, but that also encompasses the entirety of the work in just a few words. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with naming my work.
Of course I’m married to the King of Nomenclature, so it’s easy for me.
Oh? You don’t know him? Then allow me to introduce you to Mr. Tony Brown, King of Naming Things. I don’t know how he does it, but he pulls clever names out of his hat faster than a jackrabbit hauling ass from a burning den. All I have to do is describe the tale, and voilĂ ! I am living large with a title I can be proud of.
And no, you can’t borrow him. He works for me. So you just back off!
Yeah, sorry about that, but I gets possessive of my teddy bear.
What are the rest of you poor mortals going to do about your naming blues? While I did my best to interrogate … I mean interview, yeah, interview my big guy about his naming process, he wasn’t very forthcoming with results. He says, and I quote, “You just look at a thing and know its name. It just comes to me. Sorry.”
Instead, I’ll try to give a few points of advice on how I choose titles. After all, Tony doesn’t name all of my work. Just most of it. Okay, he names the overwhelming majority, true, but I have been known to come up with a wing dinger of a title on my own.
The reason I think people have so much trouble naming work is because they want their titles to mean something more than just what the story is about. You just spent two weeks cranking out a five thousand word short story with depth and breadth and life and meaning, and you want your title to reflect your hard work. So you bang your head against the wall trying to make the title as artsy and edgy and eye catching as you possibly can. This can easily be a mistake. Don’t put too much work into it. The title is a first impression for your reader, true, but once they start reading it the title will melt to the background and your work will come to light.
When stumped for a title, I find that a good method is lifting one of the phrases from the piece for a title. Some clever piece of dialogue always makes for a good title.
Another good trick is just calling it what it is. Just name it what the piece is about. One story I did was about shoes, so the title became simply Shoes. Granted each shoe contained a disarticulated, rotting foot, but the story is just Shoes, not Disarticulated Rotting Foot Filled Shoes. That would just be silly.
Character names always go a long way in helping folks figure out what a story is going to be like. Just give it the moniker of your main character. Slap on the name of your main man or woman and you have an instant title.
The best method is just let the work title itself. Read it aloud and the first thing that leaps to mind when you’re done can make for a great title. An emotion evoked by the work, an old clichĂ© that stands out, even something that at first glance looks like it has nothing to do with the piece, until you start to really think about it.
I hope I have helped a little in your naming quests. If you want to borrow the King, just ask nicely and I'll see if he is available.
On a side note, I have logged all of my submissions and decided to share the list with you guys. Not meant to be a bragging thing, it's just a 'hey look what I done!' thing. Enjoy!
Periodicals:Burst Literary ezine (Fall 2008)- Predator
Macabre Cadaver (Issue #4)- Snake Oil
Steampunk Tales (Issue #5)- Cold Boiler Blues
Steampunk Tales (Issue #9)- Calliope
Zygote in My Coffee (Issue #121)- Forever Young
Morpheus Tales (Issue #6)- Killing Heaven
Morpheus Tales (Undead Special)- Sweet Bread
The Monster Next Door (Issue #7)- Sunshine
Eclectic Flash (April 2010)- Heart of The Matter
Tales of World War Z (October 2010)- Promises to Keep
Alien Skin Magazine (April/May 2010)- Routine
Flashes in the Dark (August 2010)- Cry Wolf
Anthologies:
Undead in The Head Poetry (Coscom Entertainment)- Only Flesh
Letters From The Dead (Library of the Living Dead)- Rebecca
Eye Witness Zombie (May December Publishing)- Doomsday Rambling
Tooth Decay (Sonar 4)- Sweet Tooth
Tooth Decay (Sonar 4)- Stage Fright
Ladies of Horror (Sonar 4)- Yearning
Ladies of Horror (Sonar 4)- Good Food, Good Meat
Hungry for Your Love (Ravenous Romans, St Martin’s Press)- Undying Love
Zombidays (Library of the Living Dead)- Caveat Emptor
Best New Zombie Tales III (Books of the Dead)- Sweet Bread
Ladies of Horror (Library of the Living Dead)- Nearly Departed
Daily Flashes of Erotica (Pill Hill Press)- Five More Miles
Daily Flashes of Erotica (Pill Hill Press)- Hard Lesson
Gone With The Dirt (Pill Hill Press)- Civil Unrest
Risen Cadaver Collaboration (Library of the Living Dead)- Zombies are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other, with Bill Tucker
D.O.A. (Blood Bound Books)- Sickened
Twisted Fish (Living Dead Press)- Careful What You Fish For
Probing Uranus (Library of Science Fiction)- Head Games
Groanology I (Library of Horror)- House Rules
Groanology II (Library of Horror)- Survivors Anonymous
Malicious Deviance (Library of Horror)- Mr. Banjo
Rapid Decomposition (Library of the Living Dead)- Change of Heart
Rapid Decomposition (Library of the Living Dead)- Just Another Meal
Novellas:
Phaze- Flirting With Death
Lyrical Press- Clockworks and Corsets
Lyrical Press- Pistons and Pistols
Sugar and Spice- Burn
Sonar 4- The Blooming
Books:
Sugar and Spice- Epiphany
Sugar and Spice- White Elephant
Library of Erotic Horror- Lucky Stiff: Memoirs of an Undead Lover
The Waiting Game
A YEAR? Aw man! It's worse than the military! Really!
It is just so frustrating. You work so hard on something and right when you are your most excited about it, your most passionate about it, someone takes your name and number and submission and promises they will get back to you as soon as they can.
So you wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.
All this hurry up and wait business wears on the nerves and can drive an author absolutely mad. (That is if the author wasn't mad to begin with, which as we all know is highly likely!) But, as one who has been on the other side of things, the wait is understandable as well. These editors get slammed with backlogs of work, hundreds upon hundreds of eager wanna-be writers that dump copious amounts of turds on these poor editors, and then expect to be heard back from in a day. Not cool, and this makes your work even harder to get to, as well as enjoy.
Truth be told I prefer for an editor to take a little time to get back to me. Especially with rejections. If I am rejected right out of the box, lets say within a day or two, I get the sneaking suspicion that someone didn't read the piece. A few days, even weeks, leaves me feeling like I was considered for a time, but ultimately the piece just didn't work for them. Whether this is true or not is inconsequential. Its just an interesting effect.
There is nothing you can do about the waiting game. It is a cold, hard fact of the authors life. You write, you submit, you wait. After a time period you either celebrate, or submit again.
And you wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Blog-o-Rama Smackdown
I really stepped in the doo-doo this time. What was I thinking?
Okay, I was thinking that I wished I had the gumption to blog more often and now I have it. After all there might only be a handful of participants, but I am also a skinflint and resent the notion that I have to buy anything for anyone besides me. Speaking of participants, here's who I'm up against:
http://tonyschaab.com/opine-mine/
http://derekjgoodman.livejournal.com/
http://mrmoonblogs.blogspot.com/
Yeah, I know. They are all so way cooler and more together than I am. What is a girl to do? Well, I considered showing my boobs for starters, that would attract a lot of attention! Then I remembered this isn't a competition for content. It's a stamina thing.
Oh, joy.
So far the rules I've suggested are simple:
We have to blog once a week, with two exceptions. (one chosen vacation week, and one 'pass' week, so that's 50 blogs total)
We have to blog at least 300 words. (to put this in perspective, this blog alone is just over 360)
We have to blog by 11:59pm our time zone. (EST for me)
And, this is the best part, guest blogs count! (expect begging from me for posts, folks!)
I think it will be fun. I really look forward to this prodding to my discipline gland. I'm hoping it will start to squirt out disciplinary juice on its own once the contest has wound down to its end. My posts will probably address everything from my writing to my home life. (oh yeah, I already have some Mr. Brown stories you guys are gonna just love!)
So, sit back. Relax. This may be a bumpy ride. You will get wet, you may get soaked, please keep your hands in the vehicle at all times and let the blogging commence!
wOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOt!