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Rob Santa
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  		   Posted 3/6/2007 5:34 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Less than 24 hours into opening the door for my second anthology "Black Dragon, White Dragon" I have received 8 submissions. So far, so good, as I'm looking to draw from a big pool. But get this...I immediately accepted the third story I read, a reprint which made me laugh out loud. Brag? Sure, but here's the catch. Right after that I read another piece that had me laughing so hard my 8-year-old daughter came into the room to ask me if I was okay. I didn't even get past page 3. Are all the submissions going to be humorous? I was expecting knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out action and have encountered two funny bits right off the bat. I have to sit on the second one, but I'm all but convinced it will get accepted as well. Wait, it gets better: also a reprint.
 
Doesn't anyone write knights battling ferocious beasts any more? Should've opened the door to humrorous dragon stories.
 
Wait a minute...there's a glimmer of an idea there. :-)


Rob Santa
Hopelessly Addicted Writer of Speculative Fiction
and CEO of Ricasso Press

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gwthomas21
Adept



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  		   Posted 3/6/2007 9:24 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I was reading Smaug's attack on Laketown (from The Hobbit) to my class of Grade 4-5 students today and marvelling at how gripping that scene was for them. It also got me thinking how much I'd like to write a really good dragon story, not a humorous one, but a rip-snorter.

GW

G. W. Thomas has appeared in over 350 different books, magazines and ezines includig Writer's Digest, The Armchair Detective and Black October Magazine. He draws the web comic CHUCK THE PENGUIN. His website is www.gwthomas.org

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Bill Ward
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  		   Posted 3/6/2007 9:59 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Two out of an antho full won't go awry...but for anyone out there with a humorous piece sounds like they better get it in quick!

Laughing out loud at manuscripts is pretty rare (for me at least), humor is hard to do; if you have some winners you should keep them.

I'll write you something grim and humourless to stick between 'em Rob, if that's what you need ;)
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PaulMc
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  		   Posted 3/7/2007 10:48 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Rob Santa said...
Less than 24 hours into opening the door for my second anthology "Black Dragon, White Dragon" I have received 8 submissions. So far, so good, as I'm looking to draw from a big pool. But get this...I immediately accepted the third story I read, a reprint which made me laugh out loud. Brag? Sure, but here's the catch. Right after that I read another piece that had me laughing so hard my 8-year-old daughter came into the room to ask me if I was okay. I didn't even get past page 3. Are all the submissions going to be humorous? I was expecting knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out action and have encountered two funny bits right off the bat. I have to sit on the second one, but I'm all but convinced it will get accepted as well. Wait, it gets better: also a reprint.

Doesn't anyone write knights battling ferocious beasts any more? Should've opened the door to humrorous dragon stories.

Wait a minute...there's a glimmer of an idea there. VIEW IMAGE


Rob,

I'd love to write a gripping, no holds barred dragon action tale.

But ... I came up with such a goofy title that I know it needs to be a humorous story. :)

Maybe I'll write and submit two for you...

-- Paul McNamee

My Writings
The Tales of Doran Coyle

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Rob Santa
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  		   Posted 3/7/2007 7:23 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Like I said in another thread: I'll take ten.

More along the lines of "gripe," though is the subject of formatting. I've been subbing manuscripts for twenty years, and I did it with the first one the same I did it with today's batch: standard format. What's standard? Industry standard, that's what. It's been around for ages. Of the dozen or so manuscripts I've seen so far, only two have followed proper formatting procedure.

Crazy. I bet there are editors/first readers that immediately reject a work if it's formatted incorrectly. Why would you want your painfully created story to get such unjust treatment, even if you are bringing it on yourself? Just crazy.


Rob Santa
Hopelessly Addicted Writer of Speculative Fiction
and CEO of Ricasso Press

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Jeff Stehman
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  		   Posted 3/7/2007 7:50 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I've made notes on two dragon stories within the last week. Both humorous. Maybe it's an El Nino thing.

--Jeff Stehman

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Bill Ward
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  		   Posted 3/7/2007 8:19 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Rob Santa said...

Crazy. I bet there are editors/first readers that immediately reject a work if it's formatted incorrectly. Why would you want your painfully created story to get such unjust treatment, even if you are bringing it on yourself? Just crazy.


There's just something in the water Rob. Thing is, its not just 'beginners' that do it either, its all kinds of people. I bet at least half of the manuscripts I've ever read have been formatted incorrectly --and I'm not talking about little things like perfect margins or using Times instead of courier or soemthing (I prefer Times anyway)-- I mean big things like fonts changing colors throughout the manuscript and single spacing with a space between paragraphs and no contact info and fifteen point font and subbing pdfs...the list goes on. People are just crazy. nono

I used to think editors that penalized a sub for niggling little details like formatting were gobshites, but after a couple of months of reading slush you start to understand how they can get that way! I'd never bounce a manuscript for formatting (unless it was to request a fix so I can read it!), and I always tell people that do it wrong to check out Shunn's example and be careful of doing it in the future, but I won't deny that my mood is much better when I open a manuscript that is done correctly over one that is not. Anyone who's read slush feels the same way I'm sure.
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STForstner
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  		   Posted 3/7/2007 10:33 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I've been trying to spread the word for you. Hopefully, you'll have a large selection to choose from shortly.

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Christopher_Heath
Eternal Champion



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  		   Posted 3/9/2007 4:18 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Standard format is a bit archaic, anymore. It's a pain in the ass when you submit it to the editor with your bold type underlined instead of bold, and it has to be changed back anyway. Kind of pointless. So many editors request Times instead of Courier (or accept both), Times seems more standard than Courier. Then there's the annoying pound sign to indicate a space, and let's not forget about the space/double hyphen/space that is going to end up an em dash anyway, so what's the point there ... the list goes on. I think standard MS may have been designed for the typewriter age, and now just held onto for the sake of tradition (though the Courier font is easy on the eyes, so I have no problem there). I adhere to the guidelines, but if there aren't any on how they want the ms, I assume they're not sticklers and I will send something that's readable in Times, 12pt, but I don't use some of the old trappings that are outdated. I catalog all my stories in a huge Azieran: Mythos volume, and I like to have them in a printable format that can someday go to PDF or POD, and Standard MS isn't conducive to that at all. I find that if I write everything in Standard MS that doesn't need to be, I end up having to format the entire story twice (and make corrections twice if I revise later), and it does get time consuming...

Edit: Looks like most Standard MS, say no spaces between the hyphens when representing an em dash. I must have read a slight variation when learning how to do standard. I'll have to start removing the spaces...

Christopher M. Heath
 
"Azieran: The Breaking of Hell's Bones" in Black Sails by 1018 Press
"Azieran: Distilling the Essence" in Sails and Sorcery by Fantasist Enterprises
"Azieran: The Conquerors" in Chimaera Serials
"Azieran: Pawn of the Serpentine Witch" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: Sentinel of an Ageless Reign" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media
"Azieran: The Lakeshorn Mirrors" in Chronicles of Fantasy by ComStar Media 
"Azieran: Crestfallen in Mal'kyrrik" serialized novella in Forgotten Worlds 
"Azieran: Wyrd Sins" in Rogue Worlds
"The Coruscate King" in Freehold: Betrayal - Ghourlesh Book I
"Azieran: Beyond the Black Veil" in Stalking Shadows
 
 + others
 
 
 
 

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