State of the Author Address, January 2009
I’m getting into the habit of tallying my professional accomplishments at the end of the year. Here, then, are the milestones from 2008:
The most noteworthy accomplishment of the year is the success of my Poetry Fishbowl project; I’m exploring cyberfunded creativity with promising results. I’ve hosted a fishbowl every month, and the general trend of donations is gradually increasing. I’ve written 278+ poems this year. 59 fishbowl poems have been published in The Wordsmith’s Forge and 42 poems have been published in various other markets. My poem “The Ghost of Christmas Presence” won 1st Place in A Hint of Poetry holiday contest, and “Artifacts of Intelligent Design” won 2nd Place in the 2008 SFPA Poetry Contest. On the whole, this has been an excellent year for poetry.
While I didn’t get much fiction written - only one new story - it was still a pretty good year for fiction. I submitted 12 stories to assorted markets, and I sold 4 stories: “Pvaga and the Censor” to The Lorelei Signal, “Peacock Hour” to Triangulation: Taking Flight, “Goldenthread” to The Scorched Earth, and “Clean Sweep” to The Lorelei Signal.
Nonfiction generally fared well. I wrote over 64 nonfiction pieces this year, and had at least 46 published. As usual the biggest batch went into the Llewellyn annuals including Llewellyn’s 2010 Herbal Almanac, Llewellyn’s 2010 Magickal Almanac, and Llewellyn’s 2010 Spell-a-Day Almanac. I have resigned from the Grey School of Wizardry. I have also launched a new blog, Hypatia’s Hoard of Reviews. This blog reprints some of my earlier reviews of books, music, and other items; it also includes author announcements, publishing news, and other tidbits. I’ve joined a shared-world project called Torn World that should open some time during 2009; I’m involved with characterization and world-building, especially helping to build a language family. This will become another cyberfunded creativity project once it opens to the public.
Book-length work got interesting. I wrote 1 book proposal and assembled complete manuscripts for 4 books. Three of the latter were requested - all on the same day! So I wound up submitting a total of 5 book-length works to various people. I also edited 2 books this year.
The most noteworthy accomplishment of the year is the success of my Poetry Fishbowl project; I’m exploring cyberfunded creativity with promising results. I’ve hosted a fishbowl every month, and the general trend of donations is gradually increasing. I’ve written 278+ poems this year. 59 fishbowl poems have been published in The Wordsmith’s Forge and 42 poems have been published in various other markets. My poem “The Ghost of Christmas Presence” won 1st Place in A Hint of Poetry holiday contest, and “Artifacts of Intelligent Design” won 2nd Place in the 2008 SFPA Poetry Contest. On the whole, this has been an excellent year for poetry.
While I didn’t get much fiction written - only one new story - it was still a pretty good year for fiction. I submitted 12 stories to assorted markets, and I sold 4 stories: “Pvaga and the Censor” to The Lorelei Signal, “Peacock Hour” to Triangulation: Taking Flight, “Goldenthread” to The Scorched Earth, and “Clean Sweep” to The Lorelei Signal.
Nonfiction generally fared well. I wrote over 64 nonfiction pieces this year, and had at least 46 published. As usual the biggest batch went into the Llewellyn annuals including Llewellyn’s 2010 Herbal Almanac, Llewellyn’s 2010 Magickal Almanac, and Llewellyn’s 2010 Spell-a-Day Almanac. I have resigned from the Grey School of Wizardry. I have also launched a new blog, Hypatia’s Hoard of Reviews. This blog reprints some of my earlier reviews of books, music, and other items; it also includes author announcements, publishing news, and other tidbits. I’ve joined a shared-world project called Torn World that should open some time during 2009; I’m involved with characterization and world-building, especially helping to build a language family. This will become another cyberfunded creativity project once it opens to the public.
Book-length work got interesting. I wrote 1 book proposal and assembled complete manuscripts for 4 books. Three of the latter were requested - all on the same day! So I wound up submitting a total of 5 book-length works to various people. I also edited 2 books this year.