Anthology of Speculative Scribblings: The Old has Passed Away, and the New has Come to Stay

"The wind raced down the dusty road, tearing at the lonely traveler’s clothes and throwing dust in his face. It seemed to be trying to knock him over in its haste to get wherever it was going. The traveler leaned into the wind so as to get his balance, and surveyed the road and the darkening sky ahead. He was so frail that it appeared as if the wind might get the better of him and really blow him away. Wrinkles lined the aged face gazing out from under a ragged hood. Bony, veined hands clutched a ragged cloak even tighter. His clothes, which had once been rich, were now dust covered and well worn with long use, dark reds and blues faded with the years. The old man leaned upon his knobby and crooked staff, dragging his feet as he slowly made his way off the road to the shelter of a nearby grove of trees. Sliding off his pack, he sat down out of the wind. He took out a lute and cradled it in his frail arms, protecting it from the savage wind-driven dirt with his body."

The world certainly has gone topsy turvy since I last uploaded a chapter. Wow...I've been out of work most of March but that helped more than it hindered because...I moved into a new apartment! So not a lot of extra time for writing or anything else recently. I hope all of you are staying safe! I'm going to keep holing up at home to work, write, and edit at least until the end of the month so I should be perfectly ok.

But all this extra time for you readers should mean that you can catch up on all your favorite novels online and offline. What have you been reading lately?

Photo by Daoud Abismail on Unsplash

Click on the links below to continue reading the chapter on your favorite reading platform:

Read on my website: https://illoria.wixsite.com/annamittower/anthology-of-speculative-scribbles

Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/858420798-anthology-of-speculative-scribblings-the-old-has

Webnovel: https://www.webnovel.com/book/15781132206046605/44473526366828147/Anthology-of-Speculative-Scribblings/The-Old-has-Passed-Away%2C-and-the-New-has-Come-to-Stay

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100 words: A story or a paragraph?

According to 100 Words or Fewer Writing Contest, 100 words is most definitely long enough for a story and is long enough to win up to $500 in prize money. Yes, this is another contest. For a $15 entry fee you can have a shot at winning either $500, $200, or $100 in prize money. All you have to do is write a story in 100 words or less. Will I attempt it? I don't know right now. It depends on when they post their new contest.

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine is my next target for the Old Has Passed Away and The New Has Come to Stay. I've finally got some feedback on it and that has been extremely helpful. Maybe I can polish it up in February and send it off once I get the first draft of Dream of a Dream done.

Dream of a Dream is progressing, though at a snail's pace. I have not had much time to myself, thus I have only written 1k of it, enough to cover the background information of the main character.

More updates later. Remember to sign up for the newsletter!

Until next time!

What are your New Year Resolutions? Here's mine!

Happy New Year! Welcome to the year 2009! Many of you, as I did, stayed up till midnight to ring in the new year. This post is a reward for you staying up all that time. Anyways, I've decided to join in the popular custom of making resolutions for the new year. Or at least, I have a few writing goals I'd like to accomplish. And here they are:

• First and foremost, my biggest goal by far is to write, edit and self-publish Dream of a Dream, the allegorical novel about NaNo. Since this goal is so large, I have divided it up into monthly goals which are as follows:

January - Write the first draft.
February - Send the manuscript out to readers to get feedback and also finish writing Lwyn: A Space Trader's Daughter Book 1 and 2.
March - Edit second draft of Dream of a Dream.
April - Send second draft out to readers for feedback. Also create a cover for the proof copy and layout the text.
May - Get CreateSpace to approve the documents for the proof copy and print it. Edit the third draft of the novel.
June - Send out third draft of novel to readers for the last time.
July - Make the final changes to the novel. Start laying out the text and alter the cover for the second proof copy.
August - Finalize the proof copy and order it. Finalize the layout, design, and content for my new authors website, Sittybus. Make the graphics for marketing Dream of a Dream.
September - Launch website on the first of the month. Change and order another proof copy if necessary. Launch marketing for Dream of a Dream.
October - Release Dream of a Dream on the first and continue the marketing campaign. Try to get book into a bookstore and arrange a book signing.
November - Continue marketing and hold book signing if arranged.
December - Continue marketing but relax otherwise.

• As I said, that's a big goal and it's all divided up. Also mentioned in that goal are my other goals to finish Book 1 and 2 of the Lwyn: A Space Trader's Daughter Series.


• I will also be participating for the first time in Script Frenzy in April of this year. So I'd also like to win that by writing the 100 pages of script.


• I have already started writing a film script adaptation for Prince Caspian and I'd like to finish that in the new year. I know, a new film has already been made of it, but I feel that I need to work it out myself so I'll feel better, especially if it turns out to be the last Narnia movie made.


• Finish my short story Erlkonig and submit it somewhere.


• Finish The Old has Passed Away... and submit it somewhere.


• Work on my novel with my friend via the letter game and maybe finish it


• Write poems for school and, if any are good enough to publish, try to submit one somewhere, maybe the Q.


• Enter some sort of writing contest.

And I think that covers it! I know, I've got a lot on my plate and some are rather vague, but I think they are reasonable. Enjoy the new year and I hope many things come true! Just remember, your new year's resolutions and goals won't come true unless you work on them, step by step.

Oh, one last thing. This new year I will launch a monthly newsletter that will contain updates about my writing and upcoming events. Sign up by clicking on the button below or the button in the sidebar. The first mailing will go out on January 31st.

Until next time!

Writing Updates

Yes I'm back. Two blog posts in one day. That has got to be a record for me. I had originally thought to combine this with the other post today, but I felt that it wouldn't work too well as the content is totally different. I haven't updated anything about my writing since the beginning of June. I've been meaning to do this for a few weeks now, but something called a job has been keeping me busy and tired.

Yes I did finally manage to get a job at long last. I'm working at the local amusement park. Well, local isn't really the appropriate word, nearest would describe it better. I find it amusing that I have now worked at two of the most "cool" hanging out places for teens-the mall and an amusement park-and now I am rather indifferent to both. They don't hold any charm for me now. Not that they had much charm before. Anyways, I've detoured. I was going to talk about my writing.

The anthology fell through because 1) I didn't get Houses of Enemies finished in time and 2) The Old Has Passed Away... (which I did send to them) wasn't what they were looking for. I still need to get a move on and submit the latter to Andromeda Spaceways. It just might have a chance there.

With the starting of a job, my work on Adventure at Anwar started back up. I think I've added another 1,500 or so words to it. I have to estimate because I still have some stuff to type up onto my laptop. I've been writing on the job again like I did last summer, only there's not as much time to do it this time around. However, a few hundred words here and there do add up over time.

I have a new contest on the horizon. I'm really excited about it because it is for homeschoolers (and their parents and college age homeschool alumni). It has 20 different categories. The only draw back is that there is an entry fee. It's $5 for the first entry and $3 for each additional entry. I'm interested in 4 of the categories. Novel, Novel Cover, Blog and Blog Post are the ones I'm interested in. I may have 1 or 2 more that I may look into in the Short Story categories. However I would have a lot of work to do between now and October 21st. That's when all the entries have to be in by. if I was to do it, I'd send in the first 10,000 words of Adventure in Anwar for the novel category, this blog would double for both the Blog Post and Blog categories. I just hope I don't forget about it what with being so busy with school. I'll try to remember.

Speaking of school, it starts on the 18th, well classes start the 19th but I move in the 18th. Less than two weeks to go! And I just started packing today. Typical.

By the way, both of these posts today were written at work!

Until next time!

Summer days are here at last!

The summer is finally here and along with it comes the whole responsibility of finding a job so I can pay for college. My progress so far? I've applied to one place and am halfway through another application. A third application (in the form of an email) will be sent out today or tomorrow.

But enough of that. I've finally started to get my writing going again. My major accomplishment is that of finding someone who has promised to read Firequeen through and give it a good critique! I'm really happy about that because I've been despairing of finding anyone to help me. (Of course it does help that I'm critting his book for him).

In my last post I mentioned an anthology that I intended to submit to. Well there have been two changes where that is concerned. First, they are paying for the stories now! Second, they have named the anthology "The Dark Whole" and that has made me reconsider as to which story I will send them. It sounds like they want fantasy that is a bit darker than "The Old Has Passed Away, and the New Has Come to Stay". I have dug through my short story archives and found a piece which I think will fit. It's definitely got to be the darkest piece I've ever written (though it's not that dark). At present it is titled "Houses of Enemies" but I'm going to change the title as I don't think it fits anymore. However, I still plan to submit "The Old Has Passed Away..." to Andromeda Spaceways magazine.

That is all that is going on with my writing. Now I must be off to go and edit "Houses of Enemies". I need to get it submitted asap.

Until next time!

Finals

I'm back, even if it has been several days. The editing process has ground to a screeching halt because of finals for school. The only thing I'm writing at the moment is a paper on Crime and Punishment for one of my two English classes.

I'm still stuck on page 7 and 8 of Firequeen. I just typed all the edits in (including the extended scene) and that actually added about a page to the novella. So the total page count is about 91 (published) pages.

Right now, I'm looking ahead to this summer and the fall and I'm trying to plan out my next move. Over the summer I hope to finish editing Firequeen and finish writing the 1st draft of Lwyn: A Space Trader's Daughter-Adventure at Anwar. Hopefully I can get the latter mostly edited by the time NaNoWriMo rolls around again in November. I've also been looking at several publishing opportunities. One, of course, being the Q (my school's literary magazine). I want to submit The Old Has Passed Away... to them sometime, but first I have to edit it. Also, I wanted to try to get it published elsewhere first because the Q isn't picky about it being a reprint. I've got two places I'm looking at: an anthology that will be coming out at the end of year (deadline July 1st) and an Australian magazine, Andromeda Spaceways. I think I've decided to try for the anthology first as I have a better chance of getting it submitted there. There's no advance payment but there is the possibility of royalties if it sells well enough.

At this rate I won't be submitting The Old Has Passed Away... to the Q for a long time, but I do have another story that might possibly be ready by the fall. I just came up with the idea for a story based around 1 Corinthians 13. I won't explain it all here at this moment, but it has to do with a world where what you name your child comes true--but with a catch. The story would follow two parents trying to outwit the system so there's no catch. I'll see if I can write this over the summer before I forget all the details that aren't written down in my writer's notebook.

Also, in my planning for the fall, I've been thinking hard about getting involved with the Whetstone, the campus newspaper. One of the staff members is leaving and their column would be open. I was considering starting up a column that would feature all the clubs that are on campus. There seems to be a general apathy toward committing to a club and I'd like to see if I can change that.

As another bit of news, to sign off with, I will be working on the staff of the Q in the fall. It's a course that I signed up for. I hope that I won't be overwhelmed in the fall, but the fall semester always seems to be easier for some reason.

Until next time!