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.

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.

…to prepare submit each of the seven stories from my previous entry for publication (at least one in the remains of 2008).

…to complete a full editing pass of Conqueror Worm and send out query letters within two months of this completion (not necessarily in 2009, but no later than the end of February 2010).

…to outline and draft an entire 42 minute script for an episode of Arkham on my own.

…to submit Arkham to a spec pilot contest, like People’s Pilot or Slamdance’s Teleplay Contest.  Glad to see you’re back, Slamdance!

And, if there’s time among all of that, there’s a few other projects I’d like to do, but won’t call Resoultions, as I suspect the above will take up plenty of my time but I hope…

…to finally update the look of this blog from template to my own little corner of the interwebs.

…to plot out an original feature-length screenplay for contest submission.

…to plot out a spec script for contest submissions.

…to finish worldbuilding of Capsule in hopes of approaching next Nanowrimo much more prepared to actually write it.

There we go.  Keeping myself honest yet again.

For now, a Nanowrimo post mortem.  I backed out.  Look, here’s the thing.  I was working on the thing-a-week project, which was keeping me busy, keeping me away from other projects.  And the very first thing I did was start a new project which would further keep me away from other project.  I like the plot, but it requires a lot of world building, and it deserves a lot more thought that Nanowrimo was going to let me put into it.

So here’s where I am.  I’ve got some short stories from either my aborted thing-a-week or earlier that I think can be worked into shape to submit to publications.  The list, to keep myself honest:

• Sleep (previous purchased, not published)
• Div0
• The Rustler of Drybone Gulch
• Carbon Offsets
• The Doorman
• The Queen of Belmeth
• Looking Over

Quite a list.  I’m hoping to go back into something like thing-a-week, but editing these stories over the next two months with an eye of sending them out.  Plan one is to submit something to the next Writers of the Future contest while I’m still eligible.   Then, it’ll probably be Queen of Belmeth sent off to Weird Tales.

In my novels, I need to give Conqueror Worm a big editing pass.  That’ll hopefully start no later than March, but if I can get started in February, that’ll rock.

The television pilot project, Arkham, still remains firmly on a front burner, gotta get back to work on that ASAP.

I’d like to write a spec script.

I’d like to do a massive rewrite of Halley’s Tail.

Dear lord that’s a lot of stuff.