No Test Today

I am so excited to see WISCON has extended their deadline for submissions to their writers' workshop. I now have two extra weeks to polish my first four chapters and am anxious to expand on characterization. I am also excited to see the workshop's list of "participating pros." Sarah Prineas (YA fantasy author of The Magic Thief, due to hit stores June 3, 2008) will be there and I really hope to work with her and get some advice from another new author. I might even contact her beforehand. After reading her bio, she sounds like such a great, imaginative person, plus her husband is a scientist and works with weird devices that look like aliens in his physic's lab.

Back to novel writing. It is a crazy thunderstorming day, quite perfect for buckling down and using an extra two weeks to write.

While underwater collecting

Whew. Applications for Clarion SF and Clarion West have been submitted. After a ton of work, I keep all toes and fingers crossed. Next up is entering next quarter's Writers of the Future contest and applying for the Odyssey workshop. And then, the first few chapters of the novel go in for review at WISCON.

So, now it's back to novel writing, which I love. I picked up a few more children's books from the library. Some I have never read like Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl." Others are old favorites like C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe." What better way to move from writing short stories back to young adult fantasy? I'm also rereading Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.

And doing lots of drawing. Here's the latest (that may or may not be me):