Tag: Excuse Me

Flush Fiction Reviews

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I still haven’t received my contributor’s copies of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’s Flush Fiction anthology, but someone out there’s reading it.  Reviews are popping up, my favorite being this one that mentions my story “Excuse Me” among the favorites.

Other reviews mention how eclectic the stories are and how some are too quirky or SF for their taste.  I have a feeling “Excuse Me” may be one they are referring to.  That’s fine; to each their own.  That’s the advantage of an open-themed flash anthology — there’s something for everybody.  It’s also the disadvantage — most people won’t like all of it.  I look forward to parking a copy next to my throne when it comes.

Flush Fiction Giveaway

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment
Flush Fiction from BRI
Find "Excuse Me" in the new Flush Fiction anthology from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

You can win a free copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader‘s first fiction compilation: Flush Fiction.

Flush Fiction includes 88 single-sitting stories including some by friends  of mine.  Oh yeah, my own infamous tale of time-traveling flatulence, “Excuse Me”. I you like flash fiction, you’ll love Flush Fiction.  Go buy it!

All you have to do is retweet the key message to be entered to win a free copy of the book.  I’ll pick one lucky retweeter around the end of the month.  Also accepting Facebook re-postings and links to this post, as long as I can track them and get in touch with you if you win.

Winner to be announced April 20th (or thereabouts).

You can find my recent tweets in the right margin or just click here to go to My Twitter Feed.

Thanks, good luck, and happy retweeting!

A Captive Audience

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I sold a reprint to a mainstream market!  Well, kind of a mainstream market.  Okay, it’s Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’s Flush Fiction Anthology.  So it’s better than a mainstream market; this book will be sitting someplace where it’s bound to get picked up and read!

It’s a new life for “Excuse Me”.  It originally ran in The Rejected Quarterly in full 1500-word hilarity.  I shaved it down to size and now it’s flash funny. (Okay, I am contractually obligated to say “make that FLUSH funny.”  Okay, not so much obligated as mildly amused.)

Not sure of the details of when it’ll be out or anything.  More when I find out more.  I can say I that I love the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series and I’m stoked to be a part of their first foray into fiction.  What better to put in a bathroom reader than a story about time traveling flatulence?

Cutting jokes and other painful experiences

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

A couple hours ago, I put a shortened version of “Excuse Me” in the mail to Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction Anthology.  I love Uncle John’s stuff and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.  (Subs must be postmarked today, by the way.)

The book will be all flash fiction.  “Excuse Me” was originally published at 1500 words, 50% beyond the flash fiction count.  And while I did have other flash stories lying around, none seemed quite right for a non-genre audience (captive though that audience might be).  “Excuse Me” seemed a good fit, particularly since there were bathroom-related functions involved in a less-than-gross utility.  So I set about trimming it to length.

It hurt.  It’s one thing to cut edgy character building or riveting backstory or eloquent description — those are all tough to do — but cutting genuinely funny jokes is like removing an appendage.  In my experience, only about one in ten of my jokes actually ends up being funny.  Occasionally I’ll string a few good laughs together and endure a long dry spell afterward to balance the universe, but one-in-ten about covers it.  So in a story with roughly twenty (alleged) jokes that are (allegedly) funny, I have to write 200 jokes.  Yes, really.  (Mostly it’s issues of rewording and timing, but there’s a distinct difference between funny and flat.)  So cutting a joke that is actually funny feels like cutting ten times as much.

So how did it end up?  Better?  Not in my opinion.  Dr. Kwack isn’t as zany and Gary doesn’t seem quite so disturbed.  And for purposes of plot continuity, I had to leave in some weaker jokes and remove some stronger ones.  I also cut the racier references to sex, diminishing Kwack’s Freud obsession.  But it’s still punchy (probably a little punchier) and still has the best bits of humor (snow cone maker, lingerie shop, Vaudevillesque stinger at the end), so I think it has a shot.  Humor is very subjective, after all.

Speaking of things that hurt, it looks like I’m missing Dragon*Con again this year.  The timing just sucks.  My wife is spending all this week working at the County Fair and I barely see her and I get to play both parental roles this week.  Exhausting.  Plus I have so much else to do and so little cash to fling around.  I wasn’t going to go down for more than a day anyway, so the loss is minimal, but it still sucks.

I haven’t been much of a writer the past few weeks.  The days have just been packed to the gills with stuff to do.  There have been small gaps that I didn’t exploit to their fullest — this one, for instance — but even those have been few and far between.  This evening represents the biggest clearing in the past two weeks and it’s being dedicated to catching up on the day job.  Must…write…soon…or…ex-…plode…

 

Twenty-eight words

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 9 Comments

I am very unhappy.

I received my copy of The Rejected Quarterly today and found more than a few librties taken with my story.  I understand that a little editorial discretion is to be expected, even appreciated, but there comes a point where the author will become offended.

It started with small stuff.  A paragraph split into two paragraphs, a narrative aside comment grouped into quotation marks (a if spoken aloud…by the wrong character).  I took those in stride; they really just changed the perspective of the story.  But then…

In a fairly complex part of the story, where the protagonist explains the root of his psychological problems, twenty-eight words were completely omitted.  It ruined the logic of the story.  The printed version makes no sense. That reflects on me (assuming anyone reads TRQ).  They didn’t ruin a masterpiece, but it was a clever story that comes across a lot less clever when you start scratching your head and saying “what did I miss?”  You missed twenty-eight words.

Why did they do it?  The splice point makes sense from a bad-typesetter perspective, but I sent an electronic copy of the story that should have been pretty much cut-and-paste.  It seems as though the cut was made in order to save the story from spilling over onto the next page.  If they needed twenty-eight words cut, I could have cut from several different places, just sectioning out a joke or a POV reaction.    It’s too sloppy to be an attempted edit.  It was simply sloppiness and is unacceptable.

I am furious and embarrassed.  I had intended to buy copies of the issue as gifts for my mother and maybe some other people.  No longer.  I don’t expect to apply there again.  I wonder if others have had this experience before.  I have not shared my displasure with the editor yet; I’m not sure how to approach it.  All I know is that I’m unhappy.

-Oso Enojado

A sale?

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I think I made a sale!  Yep, I said I think.  How can I not know?  Well, here’s the email:

I need to know if your story “Excuse Me” is still available. Whether it’s available  or not, or if you choose to not have The Rejected Quarterly publish it, please let me know ASAP, so I can either reserve the space in this issue or put something else in its place. I am finalizing the current issue most likely within the week. If I don’t hear from you in a couple of days I’ll assume you are not interested.

Thanks,

Daniel Weiss

It sounds like the story was accepted and I missed the first correspondence, doesn’t it?  Or maybe that’s just how they roll.  It sure made me contact them immediately.

 

I really like what The Rejected Quarterly stands for, printing only work that has accumulated at least five rejections.  It’s the first story I sent to them.  It’s my time traveling fart story and needed just the right market to run it.  

 

I’ll be sure to follow up when I confirm they actually wanted to run it.  The whole “reserve space in this issue” part makes it sound like it, doesn’t it?  

 

-Oso

 

EDIT: I did indeed make the sale!  I need to send them a soft copy of the story, a bio, and resend my rejections (a couple good ones there).  I have all that…somewhere.  So yay me!  

 

Now I just have to wait out the other five stories.