[Mostly] Wordless Wednesday - Cover Mania! & Links

For [Mostly] Wordless Wednesday, I thought I'd re-post the various book covers from the releases/reveals in the last month in case anyone missed them.

Fantastic covers!

Now for some links.

Accepting Submissions:

Coeur de Lion Publishing is open for submissions. They're looking for speculative fiction, especially science fiction. Each issue of the magazine will be available to read free online. Pays AUD $100 per story. Current reading period closes February 22.

Despumation Press is open for submissions through February 28. The current issue will be song stories, stories based on your favorite heavy metal song. Pays $10, plus a hard copy.

Fablecroft Publishing is taking submissions for their unthemed seculative fiction anthology, Insert Title Here. 2000 to 12000 words. Submissions close February 28. Payment is AUD $75, plus a contributor copy.

April Moon Books is putting out an anthology entitled Amok!, part of the Short Sharp Shocks series. They seek short stories about someone running amok, for all the various reasons that might occur. Payment is a contributor copy, plus there are five Editor's Choice Awards of $30 each.

Contests:

Whiteduck Publishing is seeking submissions from First Nation, Metis, and Inuit writers for Thunderbird Stories. Deadline February 28. First prize $1000. 

Blog Hops:

Starting today, Jamie Ayres is hosting a Can You Handle the Truth Book Release Blog Fest to celebrate her book, 18 Truths. Play a little 2 Truths and a Lie in bloggy form. This goes through the 28th, and I believe you can still sign up for it.

Michelle at Writer-in-Transit is hosting the Ubuntu Bloghop, February 18-21 (so you can pick the day of your posting). She's looking for a variety of creative posts to express the idea of ubuntu (defined on her blog).

Anything you'd like to share? Anything of interest above? Have you submitted anything so far in 2014?

May you find your Muse.

There Can Only Be One

I have this issue that I need to find a way to get past.  I tend to focus on one type of writing and leave the others on the shelf to get dusty.

I've always had this problem.  Well, since graduating school, anyway.  In my school years I had to write whatever I was assigned, and it was never a problem, which means it's just ridiculous that I have a problem now.

You see, I wasn't getting any fiction writing done when my son was itty bitty.  Instead, I was blogging for "pay" as a mom (my blog was Not a Test Tube Baby, which no longer exists) and writing non-fiction articles for Helium.  I made some money doing that, which was great.  Far easier than making money writing fiction, at least at this stage for me.  I was also taking college courses during this time, and writing papers for those.

Fast forward to when I went to my first conference and promptly threw myself into fiction writing, the kind I really enjoy.  I stopped writing the non-fiction (which also, currently, means I stopped getting paid for my writing).

I didn't realize I'd stopped it until I was blog hopping the other day and came across a post where the blogger said they were stuck writing poetry right now, because they could only focus on one kind of writing at a time.  Zoinks!  That's what I've been doing!

Not only that, but I tend to either be writing on short fiction or novels.  I have a hard time juggling when to write what.  Should I sit down and write an article so I can get paid?  Should I work on a short story and submit that sucker so I can get my name out there?  Or should I continue working on my novel?  What about editing?  No, I'll do this.  No, this.  This.  Argh!

So how does one juggle when to write what?  How do you split your time between short fiction, novel and non-fiction?  I like to write it all, but I just can't find the time or a way to split up what little time I do find.

I will say that I've reached a semi-happy medium between short fiction and my novels.  On Tuesdays I host a write-in at Pikes Perk, a coffee house in town (all are welcome, so if you live around here and want to go, let me know!)  I'm there for a little less than two hours, and I spend that time working solely on short stories.  I'm not allowed to work on my novels or editing, because I said so.

Later that day, I take my daughter to gymnastics.  This involves sitting in a waiting room with a bunch of other parents, several of them quite obnoxious, so my son and I put ear buds in and listen to music, him while doing homework and me while writing.  Again, I limit myself to writing short fiction only at this venue.

I like to work on my novels on one specific computer.  I don't like to do bits and parts elsewhere, though I did do a little snippet from my current WIP at an improv writing I attended, and the Earth did not open up and swallow me.  Nor did buildings collapse around me.  Funny.

So, tell me, do you have the juggling act down?  How do you decide what to write and when?  Do you write what comes to mind at any given time, or do you schedule in writing time for the different arenas?  

May you find your Muse.

Both images courtesy of OCAL at clker.com.