PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING MAY 7, 2022

Well, although I will still have to stop at some point and make my second pass on the SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL before I send it to My Friendly Neighborhood Beta-Proofreader if she ever gets an opening in her busy schedule, I have started work anew on what will eventually become the second novel in the SOLITAIRE series! 😀

Or in other words, I've finally come up with an alternate plot!

Despite what Harlan Ellison always told people, there is no man in Schenectady, New York, USA that you can buy ideas from.💡🚫

Then again, I've also heard that ideas come from the ether and are brought by the Ether Bunny.🐰😉

But the truth is that regardless of how they materialize, ideas are products of the imagination.

Everyone's works differently, which is part of what contributes to such wide and varied titles within any given genre, let alone having such a vast plethora of genres to begin with.

But before I close this week's PROGRESS REPORT, although I lost mine back in 2017, I hope that those who could have enjoyed a HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY with their maternal parent(s).

In any event take care.

STAY SAFE! 😷

And I'll see you around the Internet.

Lee Houston, Junior

8 May, 2022

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING MAY 8, 2021

 A LOT OF GROUND TO COVER THIS WEEK, SO LET'S GET RIGHT TO IT!

I received a nice acknowledgement e-mail from the publisher I recently sent a writing contest entry to that they got my short story.

Still a long way off at this point from the submission deadline expiring, let alone a winner being announced, but considering past contests for other publishers I've competed in never paid entrants this courtesy...

If you're wondering why I still enter such contests to begin with, as a writer I'm always looking for new venues and creative opportunities so if I win, or at least "WOW" the judges enough for them to wonder what else I might have; it will be interesting to see what develops.

Still working on my SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL.

On Chapter 24 (not counting the Prologue) and have passed the 43,000 word mark.

Considering I'm hoping this will be the first book in an ongoing series, I won't have every plot point resolved by the last page, but the story certainly won't end with those dreaded words TO BE CONTINUED.

Got the SOLITAIRE manuscript back from My Friendly Neighborhood Beta-Proofreader, who once again found some more "bugs" in the Tokyo section of the adventure.

Man, I'm having more problems with that area than Japan does with Kaiju!😉 But this is why writers have beta-proofreaders, to catch such problems so they can be resolved long before the manuscript is submitted to and possibly rejected by a publisher because the errors weren't caught and corrected before sending it in.

When I finish making the corrections, Nancy will pick up where she left off and hopefully will have smooth sailing/reading from there.

Had a long story conference with Nancy Hansen this past week concerning the Mark Halegua Memorial Project.

As members of Team Blue, we have been working on finishing what would have been Mark's debut novel had he not been taken from the world prematurely last year. 😢

Mark was a friendly guy and very knowledgeable in regards to pulps past and present, which shows in the project he was working on.

It's set during the "Great" (quotation marks are mine because I've never been able to figure out what was so great about it) Depression and one man trying to make an honest living when...

In any event, I've obviously got to get back to writing now.

So take care.

STAY SAFE!😷

I'll see you around the Internet and—>

Lee Houston, Junior

9 May, 2021

PROGRESS REPORT: WEEK ENDING MAY 7, 2016

"IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES. IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES."

Opening lines of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Not THIS bad, but it felt like it!

WHERE DO I START?
Last Sunday morning after breakfast, I returned to my computer to attempt getting some writing done for the day, including posting on this blog; and found that my computer had crashed!
Not the most auspicious start to the day, let alone the week.

After some scrambling, replacement parts, serious system updates, and a few well chosen curse words along the way that will NOT be repeated in a public forum, I was finally up and running again, only to discover that I was now seriously behind.
Why?

During my unplanned down time, I was sent TWO different PDFs, with each publisher wanting me to review my short story for errors and send the search results to them PDQ!

The first is out now, as Airship 27 has released the fifth volume in their ongoing Sinbad anthology series.
Under a beautiful cover by Terry Pavlet with interior illustrations by M. D. Jackson, you will find stories by Barbara Doran, Ron Fortier, and Percival Constanstine accompanied by my own contribution: "Sinbad and the Sinister Statue".
It's available from Amazon.com in both print and e-book formats.

It was great fun working in the creative realm sailed by the legendary Ray Harryhausen, the master of special effects long before the advent of computer generated images, and I hope to make another voyage in the future.


The other PDF happened to be in regards to my story for the upcoming Singularity: Rise of the Post Humans anthology spearheaded by series creator Jaime Ramos, to be released by Pro Se Press.
My humble contribution, "The Rebel", is joined by a lot of talented folks, including David Michelinie (yes, HIM!), Jennie Wood, Nancy A. Hansen, Brant Fowler, and Chris Magee, with Jaime contributing the finale that will set the world of New Southhampton on its ear and make folks wonder how long they can wait for Book 2 to discover what happens next.

And of course, once I took care of reviewing the PDFs, I did manage to get some more work done on my Sherlock Holmes short story for Airship 27, but with everything else I had to report this week, discussing my thoughts on who (if anyone) was the best portrayer of the Victorian Era's original consulting detective will have to wait another week until the next progress report.

So with that in mind, have a great week everybody. I'll see you around the Internet and HAPPY MOTHERS' DAY!
Lee Houston, Junior
8 May, 2016