Growing up my father would sing and play guitar to put me and my brother to sleep. Amidst the classic rock standards (The Stones, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin) he also played a lot of his own material. My dad’s a gifted musician and lyricist and to me, listening to him play as I dropped off to sleep, there was never a drop in quality when he would switch back and forth between McCartney to Lennon to himself to Robert Plant. Even now as an adult I still believe that.

Dad’s songs had great melodies and lyrics but an overwhelming majority of them were about heartache. Think ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones, mix in ‘Yesterday’ and you’re getting close to the level of angst my dad imbued his songs with. Remember, he wrote these songs as a teenage boy, long before he fell in love with my mother, and as the saying goes he wrote what he knew. One night after listening him sing one of his more passionate songs about a woman who had cast him aside coldly and cruelly, I had to ask:

“Jeez dad, what did this girl do to you?”

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Just a quick post to say that a romance story of mine, ‘Love is in the Air,’ is in this week’s (the July 16th) issue of Woman’s World magazine.

Welcome to my blog, where the Monday updates come on a Tuesday.

Last week I talked about the importance of writing everyday. This post is a bit similar to that, in that it is also about putting in the hours and not giving up. The last week or two has been pretty spotty when it comes to my ‘write every day’ vow. There was an out-of-town anime convention one weekend and a best friend’s wedding the next. On top of that I took on some extra shifts at work to make up for the hours I lost going to these things, so all in all I’ve been pretty busy and it’s thrown my schedule out of whack.

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In my last post I mentioned that one of my new goals was to write every day. This might seem like an obvious goal, and in a way it is: a writer writes. You need to put in the hours to produce even crap, let alone something worth reading. Writing every day will get your story down quicker than, say, writing only every second Tuesday but only when there’s a full moon.

But for me it’s more than just getting things done. It’s about training the mind. Let me explain by talking about roller coasters.

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Or, in honour of Euro Cup, GOOOOOOAAAAAALS!

Ahem. The half-year mark is a good time to look at the resolutions you set back in January. It’s important not only to take stock of the work you’ve done so far but to also evaluate the goals themselves and see whether they’re even still relevant to you.

For 2012 I made a simple, straightforward goal: each month I would submit a new story to Woman’s World magazine. Woman’s World is a weekly woman’s magazine sold throughout North America. Each issue they publish one mystery story and one romance story. I’ve had some success selling stories to them, and I wanted to build on that.

So, in the first week of January I sent off a mystery. Right on track! In February I mailed them a romance. Good job Shannon! In March…I did a lot of things in March, but subbing a story to Woman’s World was not one of them. Same deal for April. It was only in May that I got back on it and sent them a mystery story. Tomorrow I plan to mail them a romance story, filling my quota for June.

So, for the first half of 2012, I’m batting an average of 4/6 when it comes to following through on my resolutions. Not the best track record. Could be worse. Either way I’m still committed to doing better. But were those even the right goals for me?

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Ack. My goal is to update every Monday, but it’s looking like June is going to be one of those two posts months. Sorry.

Let’s see, what’s quick and easy and something I could post about and erase this bloggers guilt? Aha! Time for…

Books I’ve Read so Far in 2012 (part 2)

Wake by Robert J. Sawyer – The good: I love Becky Sharp and it’s cool to see a fourteen-year-old blind girl at the center of a sci-fi series. The bad: Sawyer’s sense of humour is just too corny for me. Also, he lays the Canadianisms on real think- did you know that there are differences between Canada and the U.S.? This book will hit you over the head with every single one of them.

‘Wake’ really feels like part one in a series. There are lots of dangling plot threads left to dangle in the wind. I didn’t feel this book was satisfying on it’s own, and I don’t feel inclined to read part 2 and 3 to get the complete picture.

Servant of the Underworld: Obsidan & Blood, book 1 by Aliette de Bodard – A really interesting fantasy/mystery set in the Aztec empire. Ms. de Bodard does a great job of not only rebuilding the Aztec empire but creating a magic system to go with it. I look forward to reading other books in the series.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler – This book has gone on my list of ‘books everyone should read.’ Ms. Butler creates a world teetering between pre and post apocalyptic. Sure, there might be wild dogs roaming the streets and thieves and killers keep trying to break into your gated community, but at least there are still presidential elections. The book covers a ton of fascinating themes, including religion, race, class and gender, but still also works as a fast-paced novel about survival.

The Prophet Murders by Mehmet Murat Somer – I blogged about this one a few weeks back and how it managed to grab me out of all the other books in the used bookstore I work at. The Prophet Murders is an odd book, going back and forth between flippantly funny and drastically dark with the turn of a page. It’s like if you combined ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ with the ‘Shopaholic’ series. I enjoyed reading it, even if it throw me for a loop sometimes with it’s fluctuating moods.

Four books isn’t a lot, I know, but I have been reading a ton of short stories as well. From the library’s discard pile I picked up an old science fiction anthology that has several classics in it, such as ‘For I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’ by Harlan Ellison and ‘Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. I’ve also read the latest issue of Asimov’s and Interzone, and I’ve been making my way through ‘Les Miserables’ (only 500 more pages to go!). Plus there’s also the myriad short stories on the net that I’ve read here and there.

Sometimes when it’s slow at work I look at the books on the shelves, daring one to grab me. The other day while browsing through the mystery section I came across ‘The Prophet Murders’ by Mehmet Murat Somer. Here’s the summary from Amazon:

“The first in a new Turkish detective series. A killer is on the loose in Istanbul and killing transvestites. Our protagonist—fellow transvestite, nightclub owner, and glamour-puss extraordinaire—turns into an investigator in the search for the killer. It’s a tough case—can she end the slaughter without breaking a nail?”

The summary on the back of the book goes into a little more detail, but the point is after reading the back my first thought was ‘How could I not read this?’ And as I thought that, something clicked in my mind.

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A few weeks ago I noted that I was close to getting my 100th rejection. I got it early last week. I thought it would be a big deal, but in truth I was so busy with writing and deadlines that the event barely registered and it wasn’t long before I got another rejection anyway, further diminishing the one that came before it.

But now that I have a little bit more time I can roll out some stats. I’ve been writing seriously since about the spring of 2009. And when I say ‘seriously,’ I mean varying degrees of seriousness. In 2009 I made two short story submissions (and got me first two rejections). In 2010 I made five submissions, doubling my submission rate for the previous year and also getting me my first acceptance. In 2011 I started taking part in Write 1 Sub 1, and drove my submission count up to 60 submissions for that year (and getting three more acceptances).

So far in 2012 I’ve made 58 submissions. I’ve almost matched my submission count for 2011, and it’s not even June yet. Sure, I haven’t sold a story yet this year, but if my past stats show anything, it’s that it’s only a matter of time before I sell a story. And even if it takes a while, I’m also just pleased with how much more productive I am when it comes to writing.

Last Monday there was an article by David Gaffney in The Guardian about how to write flash fiction. There was a lot of good insight in it, and I encourage writers to check it out:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/14/how-to-write-flash-fiction

One of my favourites was his note about making the title work for a living. When you only have 1000 words, the title can be a godsend- it’s like getting two or five or seven words scot-free! I also liked his bit about making the last line ring like a bell. Flash fiction is often compared to telling a joke, in that you’ve got to have just the right amount of set-up and a killer punchline. A solid last line can turn a vignette into an actual story.

Yesterday I was sitting in my parents’ living room with my brother and sister when our five-year-old brother came downstairs.

“I am a robot,” he told us. “I know everything.”

“What’s two plus two?” I asked the robot.

“Easy,” he replied. You would think that if you knew everything there would be no easy or hard questions, just questions, but whatever. “It’s four.”

“What’s five plus five?” my other brother asks.

“Ten,” the robot replies confidently.

“What’s the square root of 16?” my sister asks. The robot narrows his eyes. We stare at it, waiting for this all-knowing machine to tell us the answer.

It sighs. “Well, I guess I have to do this now.”

The robot pulls out his toy lightsaber and slaughters all three of us.

There is a story idea in there somewhere, I’m sure of it.