Bullet With Butterfly Wings – Nearly there (and a rant about footnotes)

Finally – after two hours of dicking around (technically speaking) I have completed the first draft revision on Bullet With Butterfly Wings. The story runs in at just over 20,000 words. I need to have another pass on a printed version (no printer at home) before unleashing its sheer awesomeness(1).

The document was initially written up in Appleworks 13 years ago. In the time in between it has gone from Word to Apple Pages and eventually into my writing app of choice Scrivener (an excellent literary-writing app for the Mac) and along the way I have constantly struggled with what was back then a writing pleasure of mine; footnotes.

Over the years different applications have treated footnotes different, with their own particular quirks and oddities. This was resolved with Scrivener, which has great support for footnotes until you get the bloody document into a final output format. As Scrivener is not a word processor per se you have to export the text into word or Apple pages to do your final production prior to printing/pdf etc.

So what happens? Footnotes aren’t being exported. Or rather, they are being exported but only to word. Which I don’t use. Hate, in fact. It’s slowly, damn ugly and its styles and formatting bordering on retardation. Apple Pages simply ignores the footnotes (along with headings and page breaks, which is equally retarded). It still isn’t perfect – alignment is ignored for example, which is pretty fucking worrying come to think about it.

Now according to Scrivener’s documentation the RTF export does support footnotes, so I still have a harbouring feeling that the problem starts there. I might fire an email off to the makers to make sure.

(1) awesomeness not guaranteed

New York Story: rejected

Returned from SpeculativeReam in super-quick time.

I’m going to have trouble selling this one. It’s too damn long.

Rejected: The Man Who Met Himself

…but obviously not the man who could get himself published…rejected from Neo-Opsis.

Very fast reply, though. Hey, the could have well thought it was crap but at least they sent it back in good time

Submission spate

Ok, so I’m sat here staring at progress bars while I watch Filemaker import two million records and I’m thinking well, what shall I do?

The answer, of course, is go on a submission spree. Therefore I have sent the following: -

New York Story – Speculative Realm
The Man Who Met Himself - Neo-Opsis
The Grand Station – Midnight Street
Dead Angels - Andromeda Spaceways

The Man who… and Dead Angels were shoe-ins but I struggle with New York Story and The Grand Station. New York Story is one of my favourite stories but it does require some patience from the reader – its supernatural elements are not immediately apparent and I hope the writing is good enough to reel the reader in before they spot this as a flaw. Most who have read the story rate it, so I think it’s good BUT it’s got to hit the right magazine at the right time. It’s all about blind timing ie asking a blind man to juggle burning chainsaws ie tricky.
The Grand Station is a weird, genre-straddling piece. I like it; it’s short and snappy and has quite a unique story but again it’s an odd duck. I submitted to SpaceWesterns primarily because it has a western theme, but beyond there I’m struggling.

Submitted: Crumplezone

After a moments deliberation I decided to send this to John at Not One Of Us.

Re-read it again. Phew. What a nutty story.

Rejected: Dead Angels

Just got a reply from Terry Martin at Murkydepths (.com). He liked the execution but overall it got too confusing.

I’m trying to work out what’s confusing. Did I miss something?

Warp Factory – nearly there

Well, there has been an unprecedented few bouts of writing in the past few days, helped ably by new tunes from Down (Down III – Over The Under) and Oceansize (Frames). Thanks guys.

Funny but I have been stuck in the same place for ages (years!!). In the past I have picked up this story, dropped it, passed it onto a buddy to read, took stock of his notes (he loved it but couldn’t see where to go with it), mulled some more, decided to ditch it, re-read it, decided to try again and somehow in the last few days the act of sitting down and refusing to do anything else until I’ve got my head straight appears to have born fruit.

The big problem for all that length of time centered around the fact I simply had no idea where the story wanted to go. I knew the ending, roughly (ok, VERY roughly) but as with most things with my writing it was how I get from what appears to be a simple route from A to B without tripping over all the complications that involved such a journey. Simply put what I thought was A to B was in fact A to Z. As writing goes I’m a poor navigator.

When I started this story I pretty much went by ear and followed my writing nose – all well and good but if you are going to write something complicated that particular route really does fuck you up in time.

So anyway, I’m loving it. Cogs are turning into place, planets are aligning and it’s all making sense. I have a killer ending to replace my initial killer – although this throws up more complications. But hey, my stories are like minefields. I’m used to this.

I have the last quarter to write (all hand-written, natch) BUT I think there’ll be another quarter. The ending is in sight, but there might be a few more steps involved in getting there…

Warp Factory

This is the opening line from Warp Factory.

I love it.

When Frank was seven years old he was followed everywhere by a crow who walked tall like a man, talked like a chittering hyena and whistled off-key digital tunes that would give him hideous nightmares.

All his life he thought this was his imagination.

Rejected: The Man Who Met Himself

Rejected (very nicely I may add – take note publishers) by John at Not One Of Us (a title that always reminds me of Michael Marshall Smith’s third novel). I plan to muse about what to send him next.

Interestingly he thought he spotted a story of mine in an anthology in Barnes and Noble. Doubt it of course – well nothing I’ve been notified of or paid for anyhow.