Sunday, February 1, 2009

Getting organized

I took almost the whole afternoon and updated my submission records (I use Duotrope but I also keep everything on paper). I also dusted off two retired stories and revised them enough to un-retire them and see how they do, and I went through my other active stories that weren't already out somewhere. I sent everything out, five submissions. There's no sense in letting perfectly good stories languish on my hard drive just because I'm lazy.

While I was trawling Duotrope and Ralan's for markets, I ran across the Book of Tentacles anthology again. I remember thinking about writing something for it when it first opened to submissions, but then I forgot about it. I thought it was mostly for Cthulhu stuff anyway, but it turns out it's not. They just want stories that have tentacles featured in some way, whether it's fantasy or SF or horror or whatever.

So now I have to follow up on one of those stupid-weird ideas I get when I'm half-asleep. In this case it was me wondering what an (intelligent, literate) octopus would think about tentacle porn* and if I could get a non-gross story out of it. SF, of course. Hopefully I'll be able to work that story out, because if I did it right I think it could be very funny and hopefully interesting.

*I thought that was called hentai, but I just edited because I think I'm wrong. Anyone know? I'm not about to google it.

8 comments:

Jameson T. Caine said...

shokushu goukan

Not that I already knew that. I had to google.

K.C. Shaw said...

Thanks. I would say something like "SURE you had to google it," but I mean, it's not like I didn't know what it was. I just didn't know the right term for it.

Aaron Polson said...

Tentacle porn? I'm writing the wrong kind of stories...

K.C. Shaw said...

Depends on your intended audience. :)

Unknown said...

I have half a story for the book of tentacles that I let drop off. If they are still open to submissions, maybe I should get back on it...

K.C. Shaw said...

It looks like they're still open. I see a lot of responses on Duotrope, so they could be making final decisions about now. I guess I need to get cracking on my story too.

Cate Gardner said...

I've just retired my tentacle story.

K.C. Shaw said...

You shouldn't retire it yet! Of course, there aren't a lot of markets for tentacle stories.