With that new-found motivation from Nathan Bransford’s contest, here’s what I’m looking to produce next:
1) A submission for John Joseph Adams’ wizards anthology
The almost-complete plot tumbled into my head at work today, and until I spoil it by trying to get it to stick to 12-15 pages of paper, the idea excites me. Going to hammer out the details over the next couple days, and with a developed plot and a soft 5000-word limit, I could have this done in about two weeks if I push myself. Nice part is if Mr. Adams turns it down, it’ll be broad enough to be viable at dozens of other markets.
2) A sub for Christopher Fletcher’s “Aether Age” anthology over at M-Brane
The guidelines for this project aren’t even released yet, but are supposedly upcoming in the next week or so. I have a sudden interest in participating in an anthology, and while I’m a little iffy about doing a shared world piece, it’s kinda intriguing, too–when the rules are already laid out for you, that makes it a lot easier to break them in interesting ways. Downside: if it isn’t accepted there, it might be difficult to place it in other markets. Then again, I think I’d be much more thoroughly fucked by the fact I couldn’t get it picked up by an editor who’s already published my work and is compiling an entire book of these stories, so maybe finding other markets isn’t gonna be my first worry in that hypothetical.
3) No particular market in mind, but I’d like to do a piece of optimistic sci-fi
I was reading about the Shine anthology and thought the editor had some interesting stuff to say about how reticent writers are to come up with optimistic near-future (set within 50 years, by their guidelines) SF. I know this would be a challenge for me and it certainly seems to be underrepresented in the genre right now, so though the anthology’s submissions closed a couple months ago, I’m going to take a shot at the general idea and see what happens.
It normally takes me about a month to write a decent shory story, meaning this stuff would book me up through the rest of the year. I’d like to see if I could squeeze one more story in there. It’s been a very productive year so far, but that would be a nice note to wrap up on.
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