It’s the new way things are done.  Groups come together, they support each other, they push each other.  One person talks to someone in the industry, and if they don’t quite meet the need, they have someone else they can pimp.  This is social networking within the creative industry.

Look out world, the Cat Vacuumers are coming.

Where’s this attitude coming from?  A recent trip that two of our members took to Balticon, where they saw the power of motivated groups, realized they actually had the ears of more than a few people there, and came to one conclusion: it was time to attend cons not as fans, but as writers.  So then who are we?  We are the Cat Vacuuming Society of Northern Virginia, a group of rather motivated writers who have been meeting for nearly a decade with most of the core group having been together for about 4-5 years now.  Most of us are ready to break out.  Several of us have short story sales, and we’ve all got longer projects that we’ve been working on.  I’ve got novels, and with my fiancee we’ve got the pilot.  She’s got another pilot and several novel concepts that she’s starting to take through to completion.  Our founder has a novel she’s been working on for years, and a new attitude on life towards getting writing done.

This is a powerful organization.

This is a group that can get things done.

We just didn’t really realize it until now.

So here it goes, refocusing.  Two projects.  Right now I only have two projects, everything else goes on the back burner.  Conqueror Worm needs to have a serious editing pass.  Arkham is getting closer and closer.  That’s it for me right now, through probably November.  Cause if we’re going to be serious, I need to have things to be serious about.

Got informed yesterday that The Doorman did not make the finalist cut in the Rod Serling competition.  My congratualations to those who did, none of whom are likely reading this, so I could probably say some equally nasty things, but I won’t.

No word from Writers of the Future about Queen of Belmeth yet.  Which has me rather more optimistic than it probably should.  Last two times I entered the WotF contest, I had my rejection firmly in hand by the first week of the judging month, which I think is to encourage people to turn something around and get it in before the next deadline.  We’re now past the halfway mark in June, and I still haven’t seen that little SASE in the mail.  Which could be a good thing.  Or could be them just running a little slower this quarter.  Or me mis-addressing my SASE.  It could be any number of things other than good news.

But it could be good news.  So until I have reason to doubt that, I’ll choose to keep hope alive.

Though I have no idea what I’ll submit this month if that SASE does come back with rejection.

So I’ve had a concept for a half hour sitcom running around in the back of my head.  Last night, I finally worked the plot for the pilot out.  It had some great concepts, it was going to play around with pilot tropes before ultimately working to a big twist ending.  I was going to start working on the three act summary tonight.

Today I’m poking around Rotten Tomatoes, and I see someone else is working on a project with the same title as I am.  Well great, I thought, guess I’ll have to change the title.  So then I click over, and it’s also the exact same concept I was working on, just as a movie instead of a sitcom.  Well damn it to hell.

I guess the only real consolation is at least someone seemed to think it was a good idea.  Several someones, actually, since it’s an adaptation of a comic book that I’ve never heard of.

Damnit.  Must have been awhile since I’ve updated, as the linkback spammers hit last night.  Bastards.  So as long as I’m here, how about an overdue update.

Contests:  End of March I entered both Writers of the Future and the Rod Serling Screenwriting contests.  Writers got Belmeth, Serling got a teleplay adaptation of Doorman that I was much happier with than at any point when it was a short story.  Writers has been encouraging lately, as I got a hand-written “Keep Entering!” from the contest head on my last rejection, as well as an email that started “Welcome back!” when they said Belmeth had arrived.  So while I’m not doing well enough to be an honorable mention, I’m at least doing well enough to maintain a little name recognition.

Shame it’s blind judging.  Oh well.

Arkham:  Been working on the new pilot with Blythe, and we’re both liking it better than the original pilot.  Lots of monsters and blood and ooze and body parts and screaming.  Which I think will bring more people into the show than kidnapping and some stuff that, if I’m to be honest with myself, was largely ripped off from X-Files black oil.

Capsule:  Been world-building, and am going to present what I have of it tonight at CVS for comments and to see what kind of questions people have about it.

Hench:  New project, don’t know where it’ll go yet.

Conqueror Worm:  Just as soon as this draft of Arkham is done.  Probably mid-May.

Nothing quite so intimidating than opening up a novel to work on and see the date the file was last modified is June of 2005.

Gotta crack the knuckles and give it a go…