I'm an Auntie Again! (and Other Good News)
My friend Tammy (1lady_so_divine) had her baby on Monday morning, so I am now three times an auntie. She had a boy, Logan Trent, and everyone is healthy and well. And Logan's birthday will be easy to remember since it is two days after mine!
Tammy called me on Sunday night to say that she'd gone into the hospital and Monday afternoon to tell me that all was well. Yes, my phone was actually on, since I knew that her due date was drawing near, and she'd told me that she would call me. I expect that my battery will be dead again by the weekend and not apt to be recharged.
As though the news could get any better, I got home on Monday afternoon, and Bobby burst into the living room and said, "Check your email!"
"I just did check my email," I told him, "before I left the office." My last act is usually to refresh my Comcast screen one last time, just to make sure that nothing important is happening before I head home for who-knows-how-long before checking it again.
"Well, check it again," he said.
So I did. And...we got the aquarist assistant jobs! Both of us! We were pretty sure that we would since after the first cut, almost everyone who interviewed would be offered the position. But it's still nerve-wracking and, sometimes, knowing only a handful will not be accepted makes it worse. If only one or two were taken, I could shrug it off as there having been tough competition. But being one of the few that are told, "Sorry...." Alas, we need to worry no more. We start training on October 14, one week after getting our open water certification. Whew. No rest for the weary, eh?
Besides being a great opportunity to learn and being interesting and fun, this position is a foot in the door to getting a paid position once we finish our degrees. The volunteer manager already told us that they look first to the volunteer staff when filling paid positions, and in a field as competitive as marine science, having a foot in the door at the National Aquarium...ummm, not a bad thing. Furthermore, aquarist assistant is considered an "entry level" volunteer position. Positions exist that you cannot enter right away, namely marine mammal assistant, conservation specialist, and marine rescue assistant. Some of these, perhaps, will allow us to use our dive certifications. All of them would be excellent opportunities that we will be considering in just a year's time.
My other mutterings go behind the cut because I want the good news out front, dammit!
I hurt my hip again. This time, I think that I was done in by slogging my scuba equipment around: gear, weights, and tank, all at once. So the day after my birthday, my hip decided to act up again, and I've been walking around like an old lady since. *sigh* I did get a heating pad and kept it on all last night, and I can walk normally today and just get tiny twinges. Yesterday and Monday, I had trouble with stairs and especially bending. Just as long as it's healed in time for dive training on Sunday, I don't care. (And I think that I will be carrying my weights and gear then my tank separately!)
Yesterday, I also finished an original fantasy short story called "The Lanternkeeper." I will probably be putting it up this week or early next week, depending on how awful I think it is upon rereading it. I started "The Lanternkeeper" (mentally) in Puerto Rico and have been adding bits to it since. I think I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out.
Lastly, I have some pimping to do and wanted to share some links with my fellow writers.
First of all, the new issue of Antithesis Common is out. For as short a time as AC has been around, it has grown incredibly. This quarter, the quality that we received was astounding. We had to turn away authors whose stories we really, really liked. Sharon even accepted an extra story this quarter because she could not--or refused to--narrow it down any further. In terms of fiction (since I know about as much about poetry as quantum mechanics, maybe less), we ended up publishing everything from simple-but-beautiful traditional stories to pieces that were quite experimental, which is one of the things that I love most about AC: When Sharon sends me a new batch of stories to review, I never know what I'm going to find. Because we accept nearly anything, and we have published very literary pieces, very "genre" pieces, social and religious commentary, creative essays...everything. In looking over the list of stories published, I wanted to list a few of my favorites, but every one on the list struck me in a particular way that no other did.
So if you want to spend a bit of time reading some fantastic short stories, poetry, and looking at some impressive visual art (because the artists that Kirsty finds still continue to astound me!), I encourage you to check out the Autumn Issue of Antithesis Common. The little lightbulbs indicate that the piece is an editor's pick, and the four in the short-story section certainly count as some of my favorites. I also really, really liked "Squirrels," which is one of the few stories I've ever seen where the author played around with mechanical conventions and made it work well. (And any experimental piece that wins my heart is special indeed because I admit to being a bit old-fashioned in my story preferences!)
In addition, I have spent some time poking around links that Sharon sent me and would like to point my fellow writers toward them.
Duotrope's Digest. An online listing of markets that publish short fiction. (In some cases, they will also publish artwork, creative nonfiction, and poetry, but the site focuses on fiction.) What makes this a great resource is that you can search it based on a variety of variables (length, genre, etc.) and the service will generate a list of markets that fit your needs. Anyone who has ever searched the Writer's Market for markets knows that for every ten magazines that accept your genre, maybe three or four are actually suitable...if you're lucky. The site also collects information on acceptance rates, reply rates, et cetera, which are invaluable for writers trying to break into publishing their work. The only downside I can see to this service is that magazines must have a webpage in order to be listed, and many literary magazines do not have webpages. But over 1275 do so it's certainly a place to start!
Critters Workshop. I linked this the other day (f-locked post) because the founder Andrew Burt provides several excellent essays on how to write critical reviews of stories. However, I would like to suggest it in a different context. If you are a writer of original speculative fiction--that is science fiction, horror, or fantasy--Critters is one of the best online workshops and probably the best for that particular genre. You will read and critique about one story per week and be able to submit your own work to have it critiqued. The system seems fairly foolproof to me in preventing people from taking advantage of it to get their work read without reading anyone else's. You will have to commit to this workshop, but if you want to break into the speculative fiction genre, this seems a great place to start. Mr. Burt also seems to take very seriously the idea of "diplomatic critiquing," so I don't think that it's the sort of place where you have to fear having your work flamed and trashed by high-minded idiots. (High-minded writers of speculative fiction? That's a weird thought. But if fanfic writers can be high-minded, then I believe that anything is possible!)
Tammy called me on Sunday night to say that she'd gone into the hospital and Monday afternoon to tell me that all was well. Yes, my phone was actually on, since I knew that her due date was drawing near, and she'd told me that she would call me. I expect that my battery will be dead again by the weekend and not apt to be recharged.
As though the news could get any better, I got home on Monday afternoon, and Bobby burst into the living room and said, "Check your email!"
"I just did check my email," I told him, "before I left the office." My last act is usually to refresh my Comcast screen one last time, just to make sure that nothing important is happening before I head home for who-knows-how-long before checking it again.
"Well, check it again," he said.
So I did. And...we got the aquarist assistant jobs! Both of us! We were pretty sure that we would since after the first cut, almost everyone who interviewed would be offered the position. But it's still nerve-wracking and, sometimes, knowing only a handful will not be accepted makes it worse. If only one or two were taken, I could shrug it off as there having been tough competition. But being one of the few that are told, "Sorry...." Alas, we need to worry no more. We start training on October 14, one week after getting our open water certification. Whew. No rest for the weary, eh?
Besides being a great opportunity to learn and being interesting and fun, this position is a foot in the door to getting a paid position once we finish our degrees. The volunteer manager already told us that they look first to the volunteer staff when filling paid positions, and in a field as competitive as marine science, having a foot in the door at the National Aquarium...ummm, not a bad thing. Furthermore, aquarist assistant is considered an "entry level" volunteer position. Positions exist that you cannot enter right away, namely marine mammal assistant, conservation specialist, and marine rescue assistant. Some of these, perhaps, will allow us to use our dive certifications. All of them would be excellent opportunities that we will be considering in just a year's time.
My other mutterings go behind the cut because I want the good news out front, dammit!
I hurt my hip again. This time, I think that I was done in by slogging my scuba equipment around: gear, weights, and tank, all at once. So the day after my birthday, my hip decided to act up again, and I've been walking around like an old lady since. *sigh* I did get a heating pad and kept it on all last night, and I can walk normally today and just get tiny twinges. Yesterday and Monday, I had trouble with stairs and especially bending. Just as long as it's healed in time for dive training on Sunday, I don't care. (And I think that I will be carrying my weights and gear then my tank separately!)
Yesterday, I also finished an original fantasy short story called "The Lanternkeeper." I will probably be putting it up this week or early next week, depending on how awful I think it is upon rereading it. I started "The Lanternkeeper" (mentally) in Puerto Rico and have been adding bits to it since. I think I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out.
Lastly, I have some pimping to do and wanted to share some links with my fellow writers.
First of all, the new issue of Antithesis Common is out. For as short a time as AC has been around, it has grown incredibly. This quarter, the quality that we received was astounding. We had to turn away authors whose stories we really, really liked. Sharon even accepted an extra story this quarter because she could not--or refused to--narrow it down any further. In terms of fiction (since I know about as much about poetry as quantum mechanics, maybe less), we ended up publishing everything from simple-but-beautiful traditional stories to pieces that were quite experimental, which is one of the things that I love most about AC: When Sharon sends me a new batch of stories to review, I never know what I'm going to find. Because we accept nearly anything, and we have published very literary pieces, very "genre" pieces, social and religious commentary, creative essays...everything. In looking over the list of stories published, I wanted to list a few of my favorites, but every one on the list struck me in a particular way that no other did.
So if you want to spend a bit of time reading some fantastic short stories, poetry, and looking at some impressive visual art (because the artists that Kirsty finds still continue to astound me!), I encourage you to check out the Autumn Issue of Antithesis Common. The little lightbulbs indicate that the piece is an editor's pick, and the four in the short-story section certainly count as some of my favorites. I also really, really liked "Squirrels," which is one of the few stories I've ever seen where the author played around with mechanical conventions and made it work well. (And any experimental piece that wins my heart is special indeed because I admit to being a bit old-fashioned in my story preferences!)
In addition, I have spent some time poking around links that Sharon sent me and would like to point my fellow writers toward them.
Duotrope's Digest. An online listing of markets that publish short fiction. (In some cases, they will also publish artwork, creative nonfiction, and poetry, but the site focuses on fiction.) What makes this a great resource is that you can search it based on a variety of variables (length, genre, etc.) and the service will generate a list of markets that fit your needs. Anyone who has ever searched the Writer's Market for markets knows that for every ten magazines that accept your genre, maybe three or four are actually suitable...if you're lucky. The site also collects information on acceptance rates, reply rates, et cetera, which are invaluable for writers trying to break into publishing their work. The only downside I can see to this service is that magazines must have a webpage in order to be listed, and many literary magazines do not have webpages. But over 1275 do so it's certainly a place to start!
Critters Workshop. I linked this the other day (f-locked post) because the founder Andrew Burt provides several excellent essays on how to write critical reviews of stories. However, I would like to suggest it in a different context. If you are a writer of original speculative fiction--that is science fiction, horror, or fantasy--Critters is one of the best online workshops and probably the best for that particular genre. You will read and critique about one story per week and be able to submit your own work to have it critiqued. The system seems fairly foolproof to me in preventing people from taking advantage of it to get their work read without reading anyone else's. You will have to commit to this workshop, but if you want to break into the speculative fiction genre, this seems a great place to start. Mr. Burt also seems to take very seriously the idea of "diplomatic critiquing," so I don't think that it's the sort of place where you have to fear having your work flamed and trashed by high-minded idiots. (High-minded writers of speculative fiction? That's a weird thought. But if fanfic writers can be high-minded, then I believe that anything is possible!)