Tag: Glow Baby

The lift I needed

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

I confess, despite knowing the late speculative element made “Glow Baby” a WotF long shot, the flat rejection left me wondering about the story’s quality.  After all, it was the second story I submitted to Clarion SD (along with “Leech Run”) and was soundly rejected from Strange Horizons.  Of course I know how tough the Clarion competition is and SH is a tough market (what pro market isn’t?).

I wasn’t really down on the story, but I was questioning.  I needed feedback deeper than a form rejection.  I thought about sending it to OSC’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, or Asimov’s, but even a close call there might warrant no more than a dismissive strip of paper or email. I had already passed the story through Critters and OWW seemed unlikely to produce many more useful gems (my two stories there have accumulated only two reviews each).  So where to go?  The bar.

Baen’s Bar, to be exact.  I hadn’t put anything there in a month or so.  I’m still hammering the kinks out of “Leech Run” based on their suggestions.  My other Bar graduate, “Secondhand Rush” is in the bin for WotF’s third quarter.  So I posted GB late last night and sat back to await comments.

While I value comments from every Bar Fly, the slush editors are always the comments I tremble over.  Gary Cuba sounded off on GB today.  Like the post title says, it was the boost I needed.

I won’t plaster his comments here, but I will share a quote or two.  First he said he wanted to stop reading after 200 words, then 500 words, then after 1000…(gulp), but he didn’t.  Why not?  He wasn’t sure; maybe it was “some sort of subtle tension” or “just the quality of the writing, which [he] thought was very good”, or “the slow but incessant churning of a millwheel, cracking husks of wheat, revealing more and more of the protag’s character (as well as her aunt’s) via her old memories” (my favorite), or the setting, or something else. Whatever it was, he did read to the end.  He felt the last half was “super” and liked the ending and the story as a whole.

I would go so far as to say that this may be one of those rare stories that stick with me for a while.

He agreed with something I decided a while ago: this story must be accepted in (pretty much) the form it has achieved.  The beginning can’t endure a lot of hack and slash or even reconstructive surgery.

One other thing Gary mentioned was that he thinks the story falls into the horror genre…”the best kind of horror”.  This was news to me, though others had suggested it brushed the edges.  I intend to leave “Glow Baby” at the Bar for a while, but I may eventually have to start seeking a horror market for it.  I don’t usually read horror, let alone write it, so I’m not sure where I might place a subtle horror story like this.  Market suggestions are most welcome.

In the meantime, I guess it’s back to the keyboard.  These stories aren’t going to write/edit/critique/rewrite/outline themselves.

-Oso

Uncle Orson’s boot

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

After my anticlimactic fumble at the goal line of Clarion West, I spent some time wondering what to do this summer to improve my writing.  Write; that was the first thing.  Read, critique, join OWW, fraternize, and submit were also on the list.  But, golly, did I want that workshop.  Face time with pros, some gut-wrenching time for Scott-the -Writer.

Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card

So I thought about other options.  It was too late for most; others were too expensive.  I spent a lot of time thinking about Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp.  Card is one of my favorite authors and has a very good reputation as a teacher.  His characters ae painted on the page the way they might be emblazoned on the ceiling of a chapel.  Not cheap, mind you, but some of his time and attention could be really inspiring.

I did some procrastinating that masqueraded as thinking and very nearly missed the deadline.  I mailed my application and writing sample on Tuesday; the deadline is Friday (tomorrow).  I should hear one way or the other by next Friday.

I’m not sure what my chances are.  The website suggests applying early.  Ha!  Strike one.  The only writing sample they ask for is the first page of a finished short story.  Yep, the first page.  It makes sense.  How many editors, or even slush readers, get past that point before stuffing a rejection in the SASE and shipping it back.  But gosh, it sure put some pressure on my page one.

I cheated a bit, something I hope doesn’t come back to bite me for being “unprofessional”.  You know that big space you’re supposed to leave in the top half of your manuscript, the one for editor’s comments or instructions to the typesetter or whatever?  Yeah, mine was a little smaller than it should have been, squeezing a bit more writing onto that first page.  *gulp*

The story I sent was “Glow Baby”, the story I sent to Clarion SD that did not go to CW.  (I wasn’t even waitlisted at CSD, so maybe that was a mistake, but the first page was less pulpy than “Leech Run”‘s opening.)  I stretched to get the end of a paragraph onto the page, really only two or three lines more than normal.  We’ll see how that plays for me.  I looked at several stories before settling on that one; the descriptions just rang truer for me than the others.  “Glow Baby” is the first story I wrote where the setting was based on a real place, a place I was intimately familiar with in memory and emotionally tied to.  If the story has a weakness, it’s probably the ending.  The pace is slow, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.  I don’t think either of those potential concerns will be evident in the first page.

“Glow Baby” is my second quarter submission to WotF, too.  I have not yet heard back from them (a good sign, yes?), but it was a bit of a late entry.  The speculative aspect of the story really doesn’t show up until page 4, so it may be a hard sell to the contest.  I did write in some foreshadowing (eerie pink light emanating from the window) toward the end of the first page or beginning of the second.  Maybe that was enough to pull me through.  We’ll see.

A big month for “Glow Baby” any way you look at it.  Keep your nubs crossed.

-Oso

Glow Baby update

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I got my rejection from Stange Horizons today.  I expected it from such a tough market.  49 days it took.  Not bad.

This TykeLight from MOBI inspired "Glow Baby".
This TykeLight from MOBI inspired "Glow Baby".

I want to squeeze “Glow Baby” in under the wire for the second quarter WotF contest.  I believe the deadline is Tuesday.  I’m trying to brush it up, maybe hint at the speculative portion earlier in the story than where it currently shows up on page four, solidify the ending.  I’m not sure how it will fare, this being a story for select tastes, moreso than “Leech Run” that pulled my first HM.

I’ll let everyone know if it gets out in time.  It should since it’s no more than a day worth of editing I need.  This was one of my submissions to Clarion SD (and we know how that went with the whole close-but-no-cigar response).  We’ll see.

On a related note, I am leaving “Leech Run” alone for a while.  I can’t remember if I declared that already or not.  Anyway, it’s the only story I subbed to CW and if by some miracle I end up there, it believe it will be critiqued.  I’d hate to spend a lot of time and energy fixing a story before subjecting it to that amount of feedback.  I have modified it a lot based on the comments from Baen’s Bar, but a whole scene needed reworking in the middle.  I plan to adjust it this summer, be it through CW advice (in some parallel universe) or on my own while CW is going on without me.

Okay, enough from me.  I have editing to do.

-Oso

“Blog Faith” and other stories not yet written

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I commented on another blog (comments seem to have vanished) about some ideas for stories, particularly story titles.  It is interesting because a coworker recently was telling me that he would love to write and he feels he has the mastery of language to do so, but he has no ideas.  Maybe I’m blessed with an overabundance of ideas (not all good, but ideas galore), and I am constantly finding new inspirations.

One place I found ideas calling to me is the WordPress global tags list (http://en.wordpress.com/tags/)  This is an especially interesting place for me since the list is perpetually changing.  If you read through the tags two or three at a time, story title s are hidden there.  The ideas to accompany them must come from the mind (or soul or whatever), but it’s a kick start.

At this moment, these titles appear consecutively on the page, inspiring stories I will summarize in a line or two.  I have no fear of sharing this tactic or even the stories I think up since even if my story was directly stolen from here, my story and your story would be nothing alike.  So feel free, borrow my thoughts.  (How cool would it be to find your story by one of these titles in a mag?  Almost as cool as finding my own.)  I won’t be likely to write the stories to go with these anyway.  This is purely for my own amusement and hopefully yours.

  1. “Mp3 Kids”: There a re a couple ways to tae this one.  How far a stretch is it for a generation of kids to be addicted to Mp3s so much that all information must be transmitted this way?  Almost like uploading directly to their brains.  Or more creatively, women who can’t have children (or empty-nesters or whoever) start downloading children to their portable devices.  They care for them, teach them, discipline them, a lot like a Sims game or something.  The whole obsession could get out of control.  This is actually a lot like my story “Glow Baby” (currently seeking a market).
  2. “Real Estate Animals”: An Animal Farm-like satire where wild animals sue in court for the property rights for their habitat.  They could get insects involved and tie up some major construction project for decades, each species suing in turn.  Then the corporation files to have the cases consolidated and the animals pack the courtroom with their ilk (or elk).  Wacky hijinks ensue (pun intended).
  3. “Fiction Theology”:  Fairy tale characters (or other characters) gather to discuss their positions on God and religion.  The discussion might do well to focus on a hot topic (gay marriage? abortion?).  This could be done cleverly or very poorly.
  4. “Blog Faith”:  Protagonist searches the internet for signs from God, focusing perhaps on specific blog sites.  He/she might find hidden patterns in the postings (similar to the films A Beautiful Mind and The Number 23) and pursues a life change based on them.  Or maybe it’s all based on one post that is completely misinterpreted.  Can you imagine someone mistaking something here as a holy sign?  Let’s hope it isn’t from my Morally Unusual post.
  5. “Random Personal Thoughts”:  A pretty but naive teenage girl starts picking up thoughts from classmates.  She starts with guys: checking her out, thinking…teenage guy thoughts, maybe trying to look up her skirt.  Then she starts receiving them from girls: jealous thoughts, insecure thoughts.  Each thought might get progressively more personal, first amusing her, then scaring her, finally spurring her to action for someone’s benefit.  Basically and early psychic manifestation.  This might be a good one for me to write considering my daily proximity to teenage minds (rather their bodies are proximal…who knows where their minds are?).

I feel like there were more amusing options the first time I tried it.  Of course you could mix and match words from anywhere on the page to develop your own combination, changing nouns to adjectives and such as needed.  This is basically the same as opening a dictionary to two random words or Damon Kight’s connecting index terms on pages of a SF catalogue (the origin of his story “Stranger Station” according to Creating Short Fiction).  The PARSEC Wrighting Contest uses a prompt similar to this, as I suspect do many others.  (I advertise this one because my 2004 entry, “Chasers” was published in their anthology, Triangulation, even though it did not place in the contest.)  Try your own variation and get writing.

Greetings to all my fans: past, present, and especially future.

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

…and then, against all odds, something crawled out of the primordial internet and became Oso’s Blog.

If you found your way here without knowing who I am, good for you.  I currently publish under the name Scott W. Baker.  That being my actual name, it seemed a good choice.  I am toying with the idea of publishing under a nom de plume, or maybe even a pen name, but as yet I am not convinced this would be wise.  For instance, how would the dozens of people who have read my previous stories connect my past works to my current and future works?  If I did adopt a pseudomymn, I have pretty well decided it should be Oso Baker.  It’s a nice combination between my real name and my internet identity.

I guess my first post here should explain the origins of “Oso Muerte” in their entirety.  As so many nerdy nicknames do, it started with a character in a role playing game.  I wanted something tough, but my friends decided the character class I had selected resembled a dead bear.  Being that my character was supposed to be South American, I named him “Dead Bear” in Spanish.  Rather I tried to — it came out Oso Muerte: “bear death”.  Anyway, the character was fun and resembled me in more ways than anyone cares to hear, so the nickname stuck to me, at least with that very specific clique.  Seeing as no one else was absurd enough to use such a name, it became my go-to username for anything online.  Try Googling it, see if anything other than me comes up.  You’ll get my Amazon profile, maybe my MySpace page, maybe a few pages in Spanish about endangered ursines.

Still, the name comes across too Spanish for a pen name, especially considering my considerable ignorance of Spanish or Hispanic cultures.

I have maintained a blog on MySpace for a short time, but that didn’t quite suit my needs.  So I am moving in here at WordPress, growing up and getting a place of my own in the http://www.  I may move those old blog posts over to catch people up on the dizzying pace of my writing career (currently composed mostly of waiting).  Until then, here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been up to:

CLARION!

Don’t get too excited, I am just in the application stage.  Actually I am past the application stage and into the clawing-my-eyes-out-while-I-wait-to-hear-something stage.  But currently my Clarion applications are the foremost issues in my daily writer-life.

For those who do not know, Clarion is THE workshop for budding speculative fiction writers.  It’s a six-week bootcamp taught by five professional writers and one editor, usually award winners and often workshop  graduates themselves.  All other big-time workshops are built off its model.  I have applied to both the American incarnations of Clarion: Clarion West and plain old Clarion (often called Clarion East despite its recent transplant to San Diego).  There are other workshops — Odyssey, Viable Paradise, Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp — but I can’t bring myself to take serious time away from my wife and two-year-old daughter unless I truly believed the workshop could kick start my career.  Not every Clarionite becomes a pro, but their track record is exceptional.

The story I submitted to Clarion West just earned an Honorable Mention from L. Ron Hubbard’s “Writers of the Future” contest.  A higher placing would have inspired more confidence, but HM tells me I did something right.  A simple rejection from the contest would have discouraged my hopes of attending Clarion.  Still, there are no guarantees until there are guarantees.

I submitted that same story (entitled “Leech Run”) to Clarion East as well as a more recent work (“Glow Baby”), which was inspired by my daughter’s night light.  Both stories were between five and six thousand words, though one was Firefly-esque space opera and the other is more SF invading modern life.  Both these stories are making the rounds through different markets, though I may let “Glow Baby” take a pass at the Writers of the Future contest, too.

As soon as I hear anything about either workshop, I’ll be sure to post the outcome here.  Well, maybe not right away.  First I will have to hyperventilate, tell my wife, dance around the room, call my mother, cry a little, and then I can post here.  Bad news will simply post without fanfare.

I am not basing my career on acceptance or rejection from Clarion (or CW).  I will write come workshop or high water.  But man, I could use the kick in the keyboard these workshops represent.

This blog will not be all about Clarion.  It may not all be about writing or SF, either.  It’s a blog and I’ll throw you whatever scurries though my odd little head.  Right now my head is full of Clarion.  (It has been accused of less savory fillings.)  Come back to see what other stuff I might say.

-Oso