End of March already!

If you put one foot in front of the other, eventually you will walk all the way around the world (or at least, from one coast to another). Likewise, if you think of the week in terms of "regular day, long day, regular day, day off, regular day, short day, day off," eventually March will be over and you're standing there thinking "What happened? When did it get to be April?"

I had a drab March. One acceptance ("God of Worms" which will appear April 28 in Every Day Fiction), and one last-second rejection (today). The rejection was for a story I quite like and I don't understand why no one else seems to think it's hilarious. This editor said it seemed too short to explain everything, especially since my trolls and elves were so different from the "standard" trolls and elves. I guess this tells me two important things: 1) study the lord god Tolkien closely and then never deviate from his teachings, and 2) even a 700-word story inspired by a pun can be taken too seriously.

No news on the agent front. My year-to-date agent rejection total is 8, with six pending queries (although two of those queries are to agents who only respond if interested, and one is to an agent who has apparently fallen off the face of the earth and isn't responding to anyone, including her clients). I still haven't heard from the agent who requested a full from me last fall. I expect to get a two-line "personalized" rejection for that one eventually, what do you want to bet?

My God, I sound bitter, don't I? It's this awful rewrite hanging over me. I don't think there is any way to fix that damn story, and I don't even want to try. I'm tempted just to withdraw it with apologies to the editor, but I can't do that (long story why).

Anyway, so I am still running a pretty decent acceptance/rejection ratio for the year, with three acceptances and six rejections. I have three stories out right now (four if you count the rewrite request), one novella, and one novel. And I'm working steadily (if slowly) on Little Sparrow, which I like very much so far even though it's turning out to be a real bitch to write. But I like a challenge, when it's novel-length!

Wretched shortness

I'm starting to wonder if writing short stories is worth the effort. I swear I sweat as much over a 5,000 word story as I do over an 80,000 word novel, with a lot less enjoyment.

See, the awful, horrible, detestable time travel story came back with a rewrite request yesterday. I dread the work it'll take me to rewrite the ending, and I'm not even convinced I can make the story work. I'd much rather work on Little Sparrow, which will probably never sell either, but which is a whole lot more fun to write.

I'll do the time travel story rewrite, of course, and I'll probably write that Hungry Tiger story I've been thinking about. I might even write that octopus story I was thinking about a few months ago, even though the Book of Tentacles is full--I got as far as figuring out the characters and setting for that story, and it's pretty interesting. But after that, I'll see how I feel. I spend so much of my free time writing, I think I'd rather write stuff I enjoy.

vacuuming the cat

Mom's got some sort of all-day church thing today (she's in the choir) and I only had a few things I needed to do today, so when I got up this morning I was full of plans to get TONS of writing done.

First I decided to get my must-dos out of the way. I beta-read a story for Jameson T. Caine (which I should have done days ago) and enjoyed that so much that I decided the day was going to be an utter success. Thus encouraged, I went ahead and did the less-agreeable tasks I'd set for myself today: cleaning up the kitchen and study. That was kind of fun too, since I stopped partway through for an early lunch and then felt virtuous when I washed my dishes. I rewarded myself with a little bit of Exile II.

Did I start writing after that? Well, I had so much other stuff I needed to get done first.... So I cleaned the bathroom, picked up and vacuumed my bedroom, took a bunch of recycle stuff out, went to the store, wrote out my bills and got them ready to mail, filed the stack of important papers in my important papers file, pulled out old important papers that I didn't need to keep and put them aside for shredding, and even got the shredder out to shred them, except I can't make it work. I rewarded myself with a little more Exile II.

Now it's after 4pm, and I have this useless feeling of guilt that I wasted the day. Writers. We have absolutely no perspective.

Of course, I still have several hours in which to write this evening. But I really need to clean my hiking boots and get my work clothes ready for the week.

This counts as research

So because there's this anthology just opened for submissions, and it's about the dark side of Oz, I've been thinking about the Hungry Tiger.

He's a character in L. Frank Baum's Oz books. He's always hungry, no matter how much he eats, and he's always saying he wants to eat babies but he won't because he would feel awful about it afterwards and he would still be hungry. There's the set-up for a horror story right there. I just can't think of an actual plot yet, although the main point of the story is to make the halls of Ozma's palace in the Emerald City awash in blood. Yeah, it's a little different from my usual stories.

I picked up The Magic of Oz this afternoon and started re-reading it. I think the Hungry Tiger's in that one, and it's a great book anyway. It's the one where the sullen Kiki Aru steals his father's transformation spell, turns himself into a bird, and goes off to see the world (Oz and its boundary countries). He discovers along the way that he likes being bad, and meets up with the Nome King (deposed in an earlier book) who convinces him to help him rally the wild beasts of Oz in a rebellion. Meanwhile, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz are headed to the forest to recruit some monkeys, because Dorothy wants to make them tiny and teach them to dance for Ozma's birthday--

Anyway, if your only experience with the land of Oz is the (trippy, bizarre) movie, you are missing out on some seriously weird shit. I love these books like crazy. (But not the ones written by people other than Baum. The others all suck.)

Point Counterpoint

After yesterday, I was very grouchy today and spent all my free time reading "D" reviews over at Dear Author. That cheered me right up. I also got some work done on Little Sparrow at lunch, which made me even happier.

When I first started Little Sparrow a few weeks ago, it was going to be told from Hildy's* point of view. Then I realized I needed to explain certain things in a way that only made sense from Sparrow's point of view, so I decided to swap out POV characters from section to section. Then I stopped and did a rethink of the plot, and while I was working on it I got so into Sparrow's POV that I considered dropping Hildy as a POV character entirely. But now that I've started back in writing, I think telling the story from both points of view is absolutely necessary and--I'll admit it--a lot of fun.

*Yes, I can't leave the awful name of Hilda alone. At least Hildy sounds a lot cuter than Hilda, and I may change the name anyway. She just seems like a Hildy, what can I say?

Misery loves company

I had a hypoglycemic attack this afternoon, which sounds much worse than it was, and the remedy was eating porkchops, mashed potatoes, and spinach and then taking a pleasant walk in the rain-washed evening light. I'm feeling much better now. I need to be more careful, especially right now while I'm actively dieting. I sometimes forget I'm hypoglycemic (=my body overproduces insulin) until I have a meltdown.

Oddly enough, I was rather productive through the whole cruddy afternoon. I wrote 3,000 words on Little Sparrow, which is shaping up nicely although I'm still fuzzy on what the plot is actually going to accomplish. But at least the main characters have some compelling reasons to be doing what they're doing now. The scene I wrote today was of Sparrow accidentally witnessing a murder. It matched how I was feeling.

A frightening lack of ideas

Earlier this evening I suddenly had the urge to write a short story. I let the moment pass--mostly because I have no short story ideas ready to go at the moment--but it's an encouraging sign. I really want to write more short fiction, but I usually have to drag myself to the keyboard to do it. I'd much rather write novels.

Now I just have to dredge up an idea. It's weird how I have a million novel ideas, but absolutely nothing for short stories. You'd think it'd be the other way round.

Maybe I'll try stripping out the good ideas from "Never Be Alone" and reworking them into a fantasy short story instead of SF. Also I'll make it fun instead of gloomy. I was going to do that and make it a novel, but it might work better as a short story.

I should feel guilty about watching bad movies

I saw that new movie "Knowing" today. Oh my gawd, so very, very awful. I don't even want to talk about it, it's so bad.

I reread Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon yesterday. I have a paperback version, but they were offering it as a free Sony download so I downloaded it last weekend and read it on my reader. It's a good book, although I did catch myself skimming all the battle preparations and also the battles. Also I felt guilty the whole time I was reading it that I wasn't reading a book I'd never read before, which is a stupid thing to waste perfectly good guilt on.

For instance, I should be feeling guilty about NOT WRITING A WORD for days. My productivity has bottomed out. But then, I seem to do this periodically--I'll write like a fiend for several months, then crash to a complete halt and do rereads and revisions while my brain rests.

I got out to Clear Creek this afternoon for a while--and the awesome thing I've noticed is that I'm no longer sore the next day, even after hiking one of the trails that goes more or less straight up the side of the ridge. While I was out today, I tried to think through Little Sparrow a little more. I think it's resisting me because it's just not quite ready to write.

About the Author WHAT?

Since we can't all be like Catherine J. Gardner, whose bio is simple and perfect and understated and contains ducks, I need help to write mine. I need to send in my bio for Jack of All Trades, and I thought I'd better make it more than the line or two I usually use for magazines.

What makes a good bio? When you finish a book you like and come to the About the Author page, assuming you're the kind of person who reads About the Author pages, what kind of information do you like to see? Personally, I am not the kind of person who reads About the Author pages. In fact, I really don't want to know that the author who just entertained me with a marvelous tale of derring-do and romance seems like the kind of guy whose claim to fame is "went to high school with George Clooney" or something. (That's not directed at anyone in particular, I swear; it was just the first thing I thought of.) Should I stick completely to writing-related stuff? Should I try and be funny? Should I mention my hobbies and pets or does that sound amateurish?

Here's what I'd put if I was writing a bio for a short story. It's a bit...brief for a novel, even a short novel:

K.C. Shaw's fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Please visit her website at http://kcshaw.net/.

Best-laid plans

Ugh, what a day. I hardly got anything done, despite all my plans.

I started out well. I sent two queries out to agents this morning, and I paid the utility bill, and then I went hiking for a few hours. The lower paths are surrounded by bloodroot, trout lilies, and spring beauties, which are all blooming like crazy. When I got back, I washed Mom's car and then mine, at which point Mom pointed out that my tags were expired.

So I ran into Clinton to pay my registration, and discovered that Toyota Financial had never bothered to send the Pennsylvania title to Tennessee when the Tennessee DMV had requested last year (because I'd bought the car in PA and then moved to TN), which meant I couldn't renew my registration. I spent the next three hours making phone calls, trying to get everything resolved. Finally, about 4:30, I got it all sorted and finally got the stupid orange sticker for my tags. It all ended well--with pizza--but it totally blew my afternoon plans.

I tried to read the Jack of All Trades proofs after supper, but after one chapter I realized I was too distracted to do it justice and I'd better put it off to this weekend. I went to take a shower instead, and didn't notice until I started reaching for the shampoo bottle for the third time that I was still pretty distracted. At least my hair is incredibly clean now.

One bright note: I got The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan in the mail today. I've only read the first page, but the writing is good. So since our nice warm weather has turned blustery and rainy and cold, I think I'll settle down to read until bedtime.

Flowers and Words

Ah, Wednesday night. So much better than Tuesday night.

Everything's blooming like crazy around here: Bradford pears, weeping cherry trees, daffodils, forsythia bushes, hyacinths, the tough little pansies in the side azalea bed that survived the winter. The trees are turning green and people's lawns are emerald now. Tomorrow I look forward to washing my filthy filthy car and hiking up in Clear Creek, not necessarily in that order.

Tomorrow I also need to get some writing done. I haven't done a lot of writing since I finished Blood and Taxes, but I'm several thousand words into Little Sparrow and I need to buckle down and get back into the habit of writing every single day. I've also got e-proofs of Jack of All Trades that I absolutely must go over and correct. So even though I'm off work tomorrow, tomorrow is a work day.

Well, except for the hiking part.

the long time-travel nightmare is over

In February I started a time-travel story for the Time in a Bottle anthology. It took me a whole month, but I finished it a little over a week ago--and it was way too long. So I took a machete to it, and managed to carve it down to just under the maximum wordcount yesterday.

But I still wasn't happy with it, so I decided to sit on it another day. And last night just before I fell asleep, I realized what the problem was. An entire scene was completely unnecessary--and I'd known it on some level because I'd been whittling away at the scene until it was really just a nub of its former self. Today at lunch I whacked the scene out completely.

But I decided to hold off on sending it out until I could give the whole story one last read-through and make sure I hadn't left any references to the deleted scene. And as I read this evening, I had another lovely realization, that I needed a short exchange between the two main characters at the very end, something to tie together the story's themes. So I added that, and it worked. And I sent it off.

Watch it get rejected now, after all that work.

And the verdict is...awesomeness

I officially absolutely love my Sony reader.

I bought Patricia Briggs's Bone Crossed today for about eleven bucks, which is reasonable enough, I guess, considering the hardback is around $25. I just finished it and I'm glad I spent the money, because it's a great book.

So I really like the reader. It feels very much like a real book, although I do miss the squashiness of a paperback. I'm hard on paperbacks when I read them. When I've read a paperback, everyone knows it's been read because the spine's all messed up, but I can't do that to the reader. But that's a minor issue. It feels so much like a regular book that I've caught myself reaching up to turn a physical page instead of hitting the next-page button. The screen looks very much like ink on paper (or at least newsprint on newspaper) and is easy on the eyes. It does require an outside light source since the screen isn't backlit, and in fact it seems to require more light than an ordinary book since the contrast between print and background isn't as high as most books, but the print is crisp and readable.

Lest you think it's just me being enthusiastic with a new gadget, last night Mom downloaded Red Mars onto the reader and tried it out. She says exactly the same things as I do about it, and she's talking about getting one of her own. Blue, in her case. Mine's red, did I mention?

IT'S HERE!!!

At about noon, UPS delivered my new Sony 505 ereader! It's red! It took about 45 minutes to charge (via USB port on the computer). Until the end of March, the reader comes with 100 free downloads from the Sony ebooks store--classics only, of course. That means public domain stuff that's only $1.99 to start with. But that's fine, because I am one of those crazy English-major types who read Shakespeare and so forth for fun. The first thing I downloaded was Dracula. :)

Now, I got 100 free downloads, and I grabbed about 30 books right off even though I don't have to get them all today. Then I dumped them all onto the reader at once just like I do with my MP3 player and new songs. Um, don't do this. Because books are bigger than songs. It's been about 30 minutes and it's still downloading. I can't disconnect or read anything until it's done, and the library has locked up in the meantime.

The Sony library site is not great. It's kind of awkward to navigate. I also don't like that you can't turn on the reader if it's plugged in. You have to unplug it, turn it on, then plug it back in, and the first time I tried that it turned itself off after a few minutes anyway. That was right after it had finished charging, though.

Once these stupid free books have downloaded, I'm going to try putting another ebook on the reader, a pdf version that I bought a few months ago from a small publisher and never did get around to reading. I think it'll be perfect for the Sony. I'll post later to let you all know how it works.

I am frankly awed that I got the reader today--I thought it would be at least a week, probably two. Yay for UPS!

Edit: the troubleshooting section of the manual said to yank that puppy's connection and restart. So now I have books!

Watchmen and a small title problem

I saw "Watchmen" today. It was okay. Parts of it were excellent, but the only character I liked at all was Rorschach (it doesn't matter how I spell it, it looks wrong). All the others were either irritating (the blue guy) or colorless (the hawk guy and his girlfriend with the awful haircut). Adrian, or whatever his name was, might have been interesting, but the director had to hold so much information back about him because of the plot that he ended up just another colorless guy, this one with an on-again-off-again accent. The movie was beautifully done, though. If you haven't seen it, I recommend withholding liquids that day because the movie is about twelve hours long. I spent the last hour in misery from an overfull bladder, but I didn't want to run out to the bathroom and maybe miss something.

Anyway, I've started writing my new project, which is tentatively named Little Sparrow. I do actually really like the title, which makes sense in context with the story, but it's also the title of a Dolly Parton song. And that means I get the song stuck in my head EVERY TIME I OPEN THE FILE. I'm either going to have to write this one really fast, or just get used to humming "he will crush you like a sparrow/break your little heart in two" in my head constantly. At least I like the song.

And no, I didn't even start revisions of the time travel story today. Tomorrow.

of two minds

I finished the stupid, awful, horrible, stinking time travel story at last. It's almost 8,000 words long, which will give you an idea of how out of control it got. It just flopped all over the place, and now I have to cut some three thousand words and tighten the story up and basically make it stop stinking.

But I'll do that tomorrow. Tonight I'm indulging myself by working on my new project. I haven't started writing it, but I expect to get at least a few thousand words in tonight. I know what I want to do with the first chapter.

I was thinking about that first chapter and realized, with a great jolt, that I may end up telling the story from two alternating points of view. I am slightly aghast at myself. Then again, such a thing seems to be more and more common lately, and it will free me up to let the two main characters get separated during parts of the plot. It's just that I'm so vocal in my dislike of writers who switch viewpoints during a book! No one will take my ranting seriously anymore now.

What have I DONE?

I just ordered a Sony 505 ereader. It's red.

Yes, I just blew $269 for a piece of technology that requires me to buy more stuff in order to use it. Although it does come with a voucher for $100 worth of ebooks. And a red leather case.

Red is my favorite color, have I mentioned? It also comes in blue or silver, but red is the best color.

It probably won't get here for a few weeks since I chose free-ass shipping. I'll keep you posted, naturally, and of course I'll be very vocal about what I like or dislike about it.

Now I have to write a lot of stories. I've got to pay for this stupid ereader.

One problem with small publishers

Last month I saw a debut showcase of The Crown Conspiracy by Michael J. Sullivan on Fantasy Debut. It looked like a fun book, so when I made my last Amazon order I tossed that one in the cart too, along with Matters of the Blood by Maria Lima.

The Crown Conspiracy is published by Aspirations Media, which I've never even heard of. According to a post by the author on his Amazon blog (Amazon has blogs?), a sudden demand for the book has caught the publisher and its distributor off guard. In short, people are ordering the book all over the place but no one's getting copies and probably won't for at least several more weeks.

But Matters of the Blood isn't available either. It was published by Juno Books, which is one of the big small publishers (although technically now they're just a newly acquired imprint of a big publisher, as Pocket Books recently ate them). No Amazon blog for that author, so I hopped on over to the Juno site. I don't see any mention of why the book isn't available.

I don't really care either way--and of the two, I want to read The Crown Conspiracy more (I'm a sucker for a well-done thief tale, while UF with kick-butt heroines has already started to bore me). It just seems more than a coincidence that out of the five books in my order, the two published by small presses are the two that I have to wait on. It reminds me a little of something Terry Pratchett said at a booksigning I attended in 2006. His first book was published by a small press and was a huge bestseller--and it almost bankrupted the publisher, which wasn't set up to handle large orders. Good luck to Aspirations Media!

Hiking

The weather turned glorious this weekend, too glorious to stay inside. Yesterday afternoon and this afternoon both I went out to Clear Creek and did some hiking on the watershed trails, several miles both days, up steep ridges where the wind blows constantly through the treetops. I am so very, very sore now, and I have a huge purple bruise on my right leg where I tripped and fell on a root, but I had a great time. I love hiking. I love the silence, the solitude, the exercise, the time to think without any distractions at all.

Mostly I thought about my new writing project. I was going to get back in to Charmed Circle, but I just can't whip up the enthusiasm right now. I need something totally new. I decided to revisit the world I invented for The Price of Justice (formerly Hilda and Justice), and I've been turning ideas over for a few days now. I have the two main characters figured out, and I know more or less what they want and a little bit about what they're going to do. One of the things they're going to do is walk from the town of Simminee Soo to the as-yet-unnamed capitol city of the as-yet-unnamed country, following a river upstream through mountainous countryside. So I guess you could say my hiking was actually a research trip.

I still haven't finished the time travel story. I am flat out embarrassed about this. So okay, no work on the new project until I finish the time travel story! I mean, it's almost finished--basically I just have to write the denouement, but I've lost all interest in it. I will finish it tomorrow, and then I'll have all the fun of worldbuilding and idea-coming-up-withing for the new project.

Horse Stories

I finished Airs Beneath the Moon by Toby Bishop, after having read all through lunch, and from about 6pm tonight until 10pm, minus time to eat a sandwich, then later take a shower and put on my pajamas. In a minute I'll turn off the light and get some sleep, since alas, I have to work tomorrow. But at least I read a good book today.

It was good, but it would have been a lot better if the loathsome bad guy had died screaming at the end. It's such an obvious set-up for a sequel that I am a little resentful, although not so resentful that I'm not about to hop on over to Amazon.

Now, I have read a bajillion horse stories in my life, from Marguerite Henry to, well, Toby Bishop now. Airs Beneath the Moon hits on a lot of the tropes that make the horse story so appealing: girl finds a horse, girl keeps a horse she is not supposed to have, the horse with extraordinary ability/breeding, the horse that can only be controlled by one person, girl and her horse mocked by uppity rich girls who will have to eat their words later, and so forth. But the odd thing is that this isn't a book for kids--although I certainly would have loved it in middle school. It's a well-crafted fantasy with more than a little in common with Anne McCaffrey's Pern books, especially the Harper Hall trilogy. I liked those too in middle school. This book, though, is a lot better written than McCaffrey's books. And while I find it more than a little creepy that Butler's winged-horse riders are all girls who have to remain virginal or their horses will refuse them (which I won't go into as it would turn into a very very long rant indeed), it works within the story.

Verdict: I liked the book, but it's not perfect. The perfect horse story may very well be a completely forgotten book called Sabre, the Horse from the Sea by Kathleen Herald, published by Acorn Books in 1963, which I plan to reread for the millionth time tomorrow.

My pathetic writing space

So okay, since everyone else is doing it, I decided to take a picture of my writing space. Or rather, I asked my mom to, since I don't have a camera. Those of you paying close attention know I've moved in with my mom, so I don't have a real writing space. I do have a tiny desk downstairs with a computer on it, but there's not enough room down there and anyway the computer isn't great. So I do most of my writing in my bedroom.

The picture is totally unposed, actually. I really do keep all those notebooks lying around while I write, even if I don't need them. You can't see them all because some of them are in stacks, but I actually have four spiral notebooks on the bed as well as the gray binder (which is where I keep track of my submissions on paper; I use Duotrope, but I like having a hard copy too, just in case). The cat is Angel, who is my non-crazy cat (crazy cat Vincent not pictured). The laptop is Bunny, my eee.

The paperback book that isn't very visible is Airs Beneath the Moon by Toby Bishop, which I just got today and can't wait to read. It's about a girl who finds a flying horse!

Homophones. Look it up.

I just finished Nathalie Mallet's The Princes of the Golden Cage, finally. I wasn't going to say anything much about it because I didn't really like it and there's no need to belabor the point--I mean, it's not like it was so bad that I wanted to chew the author's head off. It engaged me enough that I finished it, even if it did read sort of like a draft instead of a finished manuscript. No, it's the copyediting--or lack thereof--that I have to mention.

Typos I can understand. They creep in and they're hard to eradicate. And I'll graciously assume that the numerous punctuation errors are just typos. And even the most carefully edited book can have a grammatical error or two slip by, or three or four. But someone at some point should have noticed a little difficulty with homophones.

The words "bear" and "bare" do not mean the same thing. Neither is "retched" the same word as "wretched." "Shear" and "sheer" have quite different meanings. I could go on and on, but here's the line (from page 284) that threw me entirely out of the story and almost made me throw the book across the room:

"The creature's breath was as fowl as rotten meat."

Really, there's nothing I can add to that, except to say that no, I will not be buying anything else published by Night Shade Books any time soon.

I worked with a zombie.

I don't even want to talk about Tuesdays. Tuesdays are awful. Leave for work at 7:30 am, get home about 8:30 pm.

Absolutely nothing's going on with my writing. No acceptances or rejections, no word counts to speak of. I am in one of those fallow periods that seem to come this time of year. I'm holding my breath, ready for spring. Daffodils are blooming, and tomorrow it's supposed to be 70-some degrees. Today it's still cold.

I did get my contract for Jack of All Trades back a few days ago, which was nice, and I need to email the artist a reply (I can't wait until I have art I'm allowed to show you--this guy is amazing!), and I need to--argh--finish the time travel story. It's a Jack of All Trades tie-in, explanation why to follow one of these days. Anyway, now that I wrote all that, I realize that it's not that nothing's going on, it's that I'm just not digging into a new project right now. I really want a new project. But I have to get all the old project stuff done first and also let my brain rest up a little.

Word Count: Out of Control Edition

I started a time traveler story several weeks ago, a fun little thing that I expected to run about 4,000 words total and take a matter of hours to write. HA HA HA HA HA. It's well over 5,000 words now with another thousand to go--maybe more--and I don't think I'll ever finish it at this rate. I also have the distinct feeling that the story is flopping around all over the place, completely out of my control.

You know, I used to under-write. Now I'm turning into one of those wasteful over-writers who have to go in and cut cut cut once a story's done.

I've had a headache all day. Hell with the time travelers, I'm taking some aspirin and going to bed to read something someone else wrote.

I'm a Superior Scribbler, apparently!

The esteemed Jamie Eyberg has awarded me a Superior Scribbler award, which is cool. Aaron Polson awarded me too! That's double cool!

Here are the rules:

Each Superior Scribbler must in turn pass The Award on to 5 most-deserving Bloggy Friends.
Each Superior Scribbler must link to the author & the name of the blog from whom he/she has received The Award.
Each Superior Scribbler must display The Award on his/her blog, and link to This Post, which explains The Award.
Each Blogger who wins The Superior Scribbler Award must visit this post and add his/her name to the Mr. Linky List. That way, we'll be able to keep up-to-date on everyone who receives This Prestigious Honor!
Each Superior Scribbler must post these rules on his/her blog.

Almost everyone whose blog I read has already been awarded the Superior Scribbler award by someone else, so I'm just going to re-award some folks. Eh, I need to get out more, don't I?

1. J.M. McDermott--I love his writing, and his blog is interesting and often funny. If you haven't picked up his excellent book Last Dragon, published last year, you really ought to; it's a beautifully written example of the New Weird in fantasy.

2. Jeremy Kelly--A horror writer who writes about trains! How cool is that? Jeremy's writing is great, and I love his posts about his son (who's definitely going to grow up a storyteller himself).

3. Jameson T. Caine--Another horror writer. You guys scare me! Jameson deserves the Superior Scribbler award just for his recent computer troubles. He lost a lot of his work, but instead of committing seppuku the way I would, he's rewriting some of the stories he lost.

4. Jeremy D. Brooks--And, another horror writer. Also another Jeremy. I love the eclecticism of his blog, where he can touch on the Academy Awards, the state of publishing today, and the creepy fish his wife filmed all in the same breath. And he reads a lot more widely than I do, which humbles me.

5. Jim C. Hines--What the heck, let's stick with the J names. Jim Hines doesn't read my blog, but he deserves a Superior Scribbler award for his fun novels. His most recent book is The Stepsister Scheme, which I recommend. I like the fact that his blog is light-hearted, but he's not afraid to explore darker topics--something that's also true in his books.