Welcome to my Blog.

You've reached the Livejournal version of my blog. This feeds from my blogspot blog. Unfortunately, the formatting doesn't come through quite as nicely.

If you'd like to view the blog or comment on the posts, you can view it at http://joshuadevans.blogspot.com

Thanks for reading!

Writing.

I had tried igoogle before, but not really played with it. It is really
slick. With one window I can check gmail, google reader, facebook,
livejournal, and twitter. And update my blogspot blog. So far, I'm
pretty happy with it.

Well, it was rejected at the first spot. Sent it to Strange Horizons
now. Who knows what will happen. On the plus side of things, I didn't
write about anything they said they'd seen too much of.

This poem brought to you courtesy of my spam email subjects. Ejoy!

Come check boobs
The air around you will smell like love.
Who was he?
Horrible news from the white house
Medications that you need.

I have no doubt more poetry will surface in the future.

Just a small update here.
I haven't in general made time for updating this lately. Time being
finite and all. And wanting to have something worth saying, not just
filler. Suppose though that this post counts as filler. I have some
writing related posts I want to make, but as I am a relative nobody in
the writing field at this point, I doubt that stuff would get read too
much anyway.
I guess the bottom line is that the writing is important, all else is
secondary. Until I've "Made It" (TM) all of this stuff is secondary.
I've been working on the midsommer madness over at liberty hall, but at
my own pace. I don't know what made me think I'd be able to kee up with
their schedule, that lasted about a week. But the projects Mike created
for it have been great. I'm just a bit farther behind than the rest.
Still working on it Mike!
My wife got me an awesome hand crafted pen for father's day. The middle
of the pen is made of wood. It's pictured above. It writes wonderfully.
Of course, without me to use it, it serves little purpose. That leads
to the obvious conclusion. I must write.
It's funny, but something so little as writing down the date next to my
current writing has prompted me to keep at it lately. Having the date
there as made me 1) not want to miss a day and 2) want to write at
least as much as I did the day previous. Should mention that the
current project is tentatively titled the Dragon Lords. Or it will have
another title and be "A Dragon Lords Novel". The bingo story wasn't as
done as I'd thought. But not it truly is done, conclusion and all. Need
a final read through then I'm sending it out to the wider world. Thanks
to Joshua over at Blue Ink Alchemy for inadvertently prompting this
post.

Well, re-writes are done. Need to do a pass or two of edits. Get a ride
from a cop friend of mine to check out his car and run some stuff by
him. Then this story is out the door. I'm liking it a lot better this
time. The ending feels right. Hopefully editors agree. I'll keep you
posted.

Something about being embedded below the post was messing it up. But
it's working now. Happy commenting!

Well, I'm caught up from the notebooks. Everything is digial now. What
a relief. The process was good to get me refreshed on where I was at in
the novel too. It's not world class writing, but it's there, and I can
work with it.

I'm tired. Currently nursing a diet pepsi. Will be a coffee night
tonight. Anyone have a time travel device so that I can do what I
currently do and get eight hours of sleep?

So my to-do list is as stands:


- Novel - at least I know where I need to go with it for the immediate
future.
- Edit Bingo story - figured out what I need the end to be, for a more
satisfying conclusion. Sub that.
- edit pre-quel short stories or complete them. predates events that
are happening in novel. Probably a total of three stories. Then sub
them.
- short story cycle - i still want to finish this. probably the longest
of my short projects.
Kurt mentioned he was having commenting. So if you're reading here,
please try and comment. Or let me know if it doesn't work. Thanks!

I've started reading Storytellers Unplugged. It's a great blog by a lot
of different writers. They have a lot of great tips there. On the 30th,
Alma Alexander had a great post called Second Fiddle.

Which falls in line with things I've been thinking lately. Everyone has
dreams, hopes, goals, desires. The janitor. The guard. The stablehand.
The intergallactic a/c repair guy. These people are more than the sum
of the tasks that we asign them. While not everyone can be center
stage, they can do more than just assist the protag with getting to
his/her final goal. This is something I've been trying to keep in mind
in my own writing.

I was thinking that this wasn't very flexible. Blogger that is. But
then I was playing with the format a bit and low and behold, I have a
links section at the top now that I can use to link to specific pages.
I want have some free fiction up there that is easy to find. Now I just
have to find some stuff I want to post there.

Free Fiction Here!

Getting stuff typed up... looking back at this old writing, it's from
October 2007.
Part of me wonders if there is even a point to typing it up. It's
pretty old, I don't even know if I'd use it anymore. But I feel the
need to do so. Getting on my PC. The character I was writing about is
near and dear to me. He'll make it into a book at some point.
The other part of me is thinking wow, my writing has improved quite a
bit since I put this down on paper. So that's good at least. A little
ego boost never hurt anyone. OK, back to typing.

OK. My three notebooks are now an array of brightly colored coded
post-it notes.
Orange for Novel related items.Neon Green for not needed items.Pink for
short story items.
Kinda dissapointed I didn't end up using the blue post-its too.
So, a bit of typing and I can be back on track. I found the missing
novel parts that I was looking for the other day. I really thought I
had already typed that stuff up, but apparently note. Fortunately, it
is all in one notebook. That's good because once I get it down to just
this one notebook, that's all I'm working on until I'm done. (well,
except for the occasional short story that pops up here and there.
If you're interested, Flogging Molly makes for awesome organizational
music. Or maybe it's just awesome music.
Now to get some typing done before Alex gets up from his nap.

I just need to do another read through tomorrow (when I'm hopefully
less tired) and I'll send this one off to a contest. I'm hopefully. I
like the story. We'll see how it goes.

I have too much.

I have several different versions of documents (draft 1, draft 2, draft
3 starts after the party that is in the blue notebook), text files,
abiword documents. Somethings are saved privately on livejournal.

Some of is written out in a notebook. Some of that is even typed on
pages that were printed out and stuck in the middle of my notebook at
what is likely their corresponding spots.

Man what a mess. I have three novels in various states. One, some
portion through it. A second, this conjumbled mess of things
everywhere. A third that is mostly outline notes only in my notebook.
Probably some printed pages to go with that.

That's just novels. I'm not even sure I want to look into the short
story folders. Though fortunately all short story stuff is typed up.
None of that floating around notebooks. Can thank Liberty Hall for
that, they're responsible for the bulk of my short story work, and it's
all be done at a PC.

It's driving me nuts. I need to organize this all, somehow.

I've started reading Storytellers Unplugged. It's a great blog by a lot
of different writers. They havea lot of great tips there. On the 30th,
Alma Alexander had a great post called Second Fiddle.

Which falls in line with things I've been thinking lately. Everyone has
dreams, hopes, goals, desires. The janitor. The guard. The stablehand.
The intergallactic a/c repair guy. These people are more than the sum
of the tasks that we asign them. While not everyone can be center
stage, they can be more than just assist the protag with getting to
his/her final goal. This is something I've been trying to keep in mind
in my own writing.

I did a flash over at Liberty Hall last Friday. Response was descent,
considering I didn't have time to finish the story and just kind of
dropped it off in front of the door. Literally and figuratively. Oddly,
having a dog in the story has gotten a good response. So I was working
on that, but now it's time to watch Castle, one of the few shows I make
it a point to watch. (The other being Dollhouse, and now maybe Medium.)
But until this post had been working on some more of that story, and
listening to Floyd. By and far my favorite writing music. Anyway. the
story is a Pittsburgh where a virus has broken out and the people left
there are trapped within the city. So that's you know, coming along.
This is very random... kind of all over. Lot going on right now. Too
much cleaning to be done around here. Never done.

That leaves me with two other stories to edit and send out. One a
fantasy, the other a modern magic/mysticism story. One, the modern
story, is my bingo story that I submitted to Shimmer sometime last
year. They liked it, but pointed out some things that need a change.
I'm finally getting around to that. I agreed with their assessment, I
just wasn't sure how I wanted to change the ending. So I left it sit
for a while. I think I have that ending now, just need to execute. They
are accepting submissions again, so maybe I'll shoot it back to them
and see what they think.The other story was one I'd written for a game
world and had been accepted until the magazine folded. I've edited it
and made it truly my own. So, I'm excited to get that one out too. It
ties in to my novel(s).So that's you know, coming along.

I just need to do another read through tomorrow (when I'm hopefully
less tired) and I'll send this one off to a contest. I'm hopefully. I
like the story. We'll see how it goes.