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.

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.

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.

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.

Gotta crack the knuckles and give it a go…

Now, I can already hear you.  But David, you’re saying, don’t you normally work an eight hour day?  Part of the goal will be to ramp up.  January: 6 hours.  Feb: 6.5 hours.  By May I’ll be taking an 8 hours writing day.  It’s something I’m going to have to get used to, but it’s something I want to get used to.

Follow up to yesterday: submission is safely being whisked off towards Los Angeles.

No name on the work except the cover.  Check.

Page numbers.  Check.

Manuscript format.  Check

SASE.  Check.

Printing has completed.  Now it’s just working up the nerves to head down to the car and get me to the Post Office.  After this one heads off, the next project will probably be a big edit of The Dorman, a story that I think has a lot of good potential, but also needs a really strong editing pass.

That was until two weekends ago when I brought a copy to a book swap.  I brought it as a joke to the other member of the CVS present, not realizing that there would be more people there than just the writing group.  And sure enough, someone grabbed the book.  Who wasn’t a member of the group.  So that means that, once again, there are copies out there.

So I’ve been thinking “what the hell”.  This is a book that I originally serialized as I wrote it on my old Livejournal account.  This is a book that I put onto Lulu for the world to see.  I did both of these knowing full well that I was blowing away the First Publication Rights on the novel.  So it’s time to do it again.  New website, new blog, new year, same old book.  Keep an eye out, as over the next few months I’m going to start serializing Rust here on the website, probably over at my Burn Bin, for anyone who has heard of it and been curious.  I’m not rewriting it, I’m not doing another editing pass, it will be there in its full glory in the format available on Lulu.

Enjoy!

…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.