MatthewWuertz

To celebrate the publication of my short story, “fc01a9,” in Aoife’s Kiss, I’m holding a giveaway for a copy of the September Issue.  Details are posted on my blog here: http://matthewwuertz.blogspot.com/2009/09/aoifes-kiss-giveaway.html

In other news, I finished a rough draft for my latest fantasy short story, and it’s a little over 8,000 words long.  My rough drafts are typically the longest of all drafts, so I’m sure this will get cut down quite a bit over the next iterations.  It felt like I would never reach the end of this draft, so I’m really pleased that I finally finished it.
 

I’m still working on the first draft to my latest fantasy short story.  It’s currently approaching 5K, and I still have a little ways to go on it.  Optimistically, the draft might be complete by August, but I’m not sure if I can pull that off or not.

I’m happy to announce that I sold another fantasy short story to MindFlights.  "The Magicera's Confession" will be available online once it’s published.

I’m still working on the first draft of the new fantasy tale, and it continues to shape itself into something over 5K (though I’m not that far into it yet).  I’m trying to add much more fantastic elements into this story than previous tales in this particular series.  I also sat down earlier today and typed out an opening for a new fantasy short story so that I’d have it down.  It seems my fiction writing pendulum has swung heavily towards the fantasy side at the moment.

I need to do a couple of quick fixes to the fantasy short story, and then it’ll be in submission somewhere.  I’m sticking with fantasy editing for now, working over an older story that’s currently over 6,000 words long.  I’m not sure what the next original project might be.  There are random ideas in my head, but I haven’t spun them into anything constructive yet.

The past week and weekend gave me ample opportunity to work on my latest fantasy and science-fiction short stories.  The time travel story is at a place where I need to read it aloud and hopefully bounce it off someone for some feedback.  The fantasy story went through the big sweeping changes edit, so there’s still a lot of cleanup work left to do.  I think that by the end of March (if not sooner), both stories will be in submission queues somewhere.  Then I must consider my next project…

I started editing my time travel story last night.  I spent more time checking terminology than correcting the story itself.  Perhaps this story will kindle an interest in writing historical fiction, something I’ve only attempted once before.  I enjoy history, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I meddle in the genre at some point.

I completed a rough draft of my fantasy short story. I don’t think I have any humor in it at all, and it is quite dark in places. Dark, for me, does not mean that it fringes on horror. In my works, dark fantasy means that the protagonist is experiencing something quite unpleasant without ending up happily ever after. In this story, I think the protagonist ends up in a somewhat worse state of mind.
 

I’ve been pretty behind with writing projects for the past month, but as life is becoming more organized and we continue to adjust to a new person living with us, things will get better.  Today I submitted three short stories that have been waiting to go back out to fresh markets for several weeks.  Usually I can redirect a story back out within the same day of receiving a rejection, but I couldn’t keep up in December.  Time to get life (not just writing life) back on track.  Huzzah to 2009!