Hiya! Anne here. I’m a YA author-in-training, slave to folklore and mythology from around the world, and beagle-owner. Brody the beagle and I live in Denver, Colorado. I’m currently unagented but hopeful.

As the blog title suggests, most of my entries chronicle my path to publication. I’ve been writing short stories to flex my writing muscles and winning a couple contests along the way. All of them are listed under Saturday Shorts.

Here are a few to get us acquainted: La Belle Dame sans Merci & Princess Tuvstarr (winners at merry_fates comm); Aqualight & All the Ships Go Down (winners at brigits_flame comm); Biology 101 & Rip Out the Wings of a Butterfly (personal favs).

I've been talking about moving from LJ to some other blogging site for a long time now. Still haven't made the move 100%, but I'm starting to lean in the WordPress direction. In fact, two other writers (rebness and @jenwritesthings)and I have started Cimmerian Tales. We post stories Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. Every week we write ~1,500 words on a new theme or prompt. We'd love it if you stopped by for a tale or six (which is how many will be posted come Friday night). So far we've talked about cursed trees, centaurs, and the Titanic. Bring a flashlight because we're not leaving the lights on. >:D

As soon as I figure out the workings of it, I'll post the link to the RSS feed. Until then, you can follow us on twitter: @cimmeriantales or CT on Tumblr.

We welcome comments, critiques, and cookies.

PS: rebness mentions in this post right here, every story isn't going to be a best-seller. We going to throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Just like pasta, not everything will, but I hope that you'll find something in all of them to enjoy. We're pretty damn excited about the whole thing.

This time of year is when I share my resolutions publicly so I have more impetus to finish them. I usually complete about 80% of them. Last year I finished 40% because 2011 as a whole was a long difficult year. I lost a lot. It's hard for me to look back and find the positives, but they were there mixed up with the negatives. They're harder to find because they hid in the little things. Like, Brody was healthy. Or, my friends were kind.

2012's list is compiled of things I can do tomorrow, things I can do in months to come, and things that will span the entire 12 months. Typically, I make twelve resolutions -- one for each month -- and here they are in no specific order:

1. Do something that scares me once a month (but that isn't life-threatening to me or others)
   
2. Detail and fix car
   
3. Be Healthier in mind, body, and spirit
   
4. Write
   
   • Submit more short stories
     
   • Work on that horror novel
     
   • Write query / synopsis for U. Start that scary process (can count as #1 too!)
     
   • Self-publish collection with or without illustrations
   
   
5. Get a professional pedicure more than once a year
   
6. Purchase an eReader
   
7. Catalogue music, movies, and books
   
   • Sell, trade, or give away all the doubles / extras
   
   
8. Move blog from LJ to Blogger (in Sep when paid acct expires)
   
9. Write Thank Yous
   
10. Curb dining-out from every day to once a month (which is a sneaky way of me saying I still need to learn how to cook)
    
11. Learn a new skill (2010 = guitar, 2011 = crochet). Thinking this one should be in tech
    
12. Go somewhere I've never been before.
    

2012: I want to make an impact and do something that matters. That's not on the list, but more than anything, I want to get busy living so I have no time for dying.

I forgot to mention that I'm getting rid of my internet @home starting tomorrow. I have high hopes this means I'll be more productive without the distraction it brings.

Not much to say up-front. My lists this year are incomplete. Somewhere in the middle I stopped writing down the books I'd read and the movies I'd seen. These two lists are not in order either, but it's a good chunk of the truth.

One more thing, this is a little "game" my brother and I play every year. The goal is to have more books than movies on the list. The rest of the rules are arbitrary and change as fast as we can think of reasons to change them.

( Books 2011 )

( Movies 2011 )

I’ve been working on this for two weeks, and it remains a mess. But if I don’t let it into the world now, I never will; and then I will regret that too. Forgive me for my blunderings; this will be a long entry.

I call one of my dearest friends “Sandra Dee”, and even after all these years of friendship -- over a decade -- she smiles at me when I call her that. She smiles and says, “I’m Sandra Kay!”

Her refusal to be anything but who she was is one of the many things I’ll miss about her. Sandra passed away on November 22nd, unexpected and suddenly. She was only 39. She had been married the week before, on November 12th, to her soul mate, Robert. For ten days she went by the one nickname she’d wanted more than anything else as long as I knew her: Mrs.

”There are no happy endings because nothing ends.”
~ The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

I’d like to believe that’s true, but the fact is that there’s an irreparable hole in my life. Sandra was the older sister I never had. She wasn’t famous or rich, but she was a light in my life for too short a time. We met while playing ice hockey. I was in school and working as a Zamboni driver for a local ice rink as my after-school job. Beyond decisions on the ice, she talked me through so many life decisions over the years. I don’t exactly know how to be me without her a phone call away.



I never played with a more passionate player than Sandra. She wasn’t the best player, or the fastest, or the biggest, but Sandra pushed herself to play with 100% of everything she could give the sport. She made me such a better player for it. For every goal she got, Sandra spent about four minutes in the penalty box. I always teased her that she needed to get sneakier about her infractions. “It’s only cheating if you get caught.”

( I miss you )

Someone reminded me that I haven't posted in a bit. Sorry. Things are crazy at work (per usual). Here, have the idea of something I can't play with yet, but it was good enough for a 300 word contest:

I’m eight and don’t yet know fear.

Mother’s screaming pierces my sleep. Getting out of bed and picking up my new blade, I race up the servant’s staircase in the North Tower. It’s cramped and dark, the screams echo against the cold stones, making the space smaller.

I’m eight and don’t yet know monsters.

A blast of cold air hits me as I reach my parents’ bedchamber. Moonlight falls through an enormous slash in the wall. The smell of butchered meat and feathers fills my nose. A rush of wings and claws overpower Mother. I see Father strewn across the bed like a discarded doll. His once-proud chest lies in shreds; he stares at me with eyeless sockets. A bird-woman throws Eleanor, my infant sister, out into the night to another who catches the babe in her feet and flies away. Eleanor’s wails carry on the wind.

I’m eight and don’t yet know bravery.

The steel’s heavy in my sweaty grip. Stepping into the room, chin held level, I avoid looking down at my parents. “I command you to leave!” I scream in a high-pitched voice. A beautiful woman’s face, streaked with blood, turns to find me in the dark of the stairwell.

I’m eight and don’t yet know pain.

In an instant she’s upon me, one talon gripping around my waist, and the other stabbing deep into my left cheek. Her wings snap and move in the air above me. Something sings through my veins. I raise my sword, slashing down hard and true. The blade bites until two heavy talons fall to the floor. The price: my eye. I grip the hollow space, and hear the king’s guard marching inside. The bird-woman escapes, a curse on her lips.

I’m eight and don’t yet know the word for revenge.

Leave a comment and:

• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
  
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
  
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions (but only if you want to).

Five questions from the delightful rebness:

( Here There Be Questions and Answers )

If anyone wants to know moar about me, please feel free to ask in the comments.

The last book in the WOLVES OF MERCY FALLS trilogy is coming in July! You can win a bunch of great prizes at m_stiefvater's blog. I really want the ARC of THE SCORPIO RACES! I pine. I pine! My copy of FOREVER has been pre-ordered since ... forever ago. ;)

Look at FOREVER's book trailer with music composed and performed by Ms. Stiefvater herself. (Is there anything she can't do?)



If you want a SIGNED copy of any of Maggie's works, please visit Fountain Bookstore.

This past weekend, I had the fortune of attending the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs. It was my first writers conference, and it was also amazing! I came home with so many new tools that I want to implement into my work.

I thought I'd share ten things that allowed me to really immerse myself in the writing world.

1. Team Up then Split Up - I was fortunate enough to attend with two other people from our Wednesday Write-in (aka: #datenight on Twitter). We were able to cover 2 times (and on occasion 3 times) as many sessions than if I had gone alone. I’ve gone to work-related conferences, and I know how hard it is to pick between a number of sessions and feeling like I’m missing out by picking one over the other. This way, I got the best of all worlds.
   
   
2. Don't Be Shy - You’re either an extrovert or an introvert. Our little threesome was varying degrees of introvert. Many writers are the latter. A con story: at all our meals we sat with a table of 10 people. It was a little hard to hear people across the table, but we all tried to say hello and what we wrote. (The answer was everything from PBs to Romance. Every skill level was represented.) One meal, we sat down and there was a girl who didn’t say more than three words. I feel like she didn’t get everything out of that conference because she didn’t wear a mask of confidence.
   
   
3. Network - I finally found myself surrounded by like-minded people. For the first time, it wasn’t embarrassing to talk about the people in my head to other people. I met people I’d only seen online, I met people to sit next to during sessions and get valuable information and advice from, and I met people that I now follow on Twitter. Writing can be a very solitary endeavor. It doesn’t have to be. Find people you can talk shop with and exchange information. If you do this in the first session, you can then agree to split-up and share the information at the next meal. :)
   
   
4. Bring Business Cards - These are an inexpensive way to give the people you meet your information. If you’re published, you probably already have these with your book cover. If you’re not published, you can still add contact information, as well as what you write. On my business cards, I have my name, mailing address, Twitter, email, and Live Journal address. They’re small enough to slip into a pocket, and you can find places online that will let you make them for free and charge only shipping.
   
   
5. Have a Plan of Attack - Every conference (all work-related) I’ve ever attended has had the program available before the actual event. Some send these to you in the mail, some have them available online to print, and some will even send this to your phone. Our group had a pre-con dinner where we picked out the sessions we wanted to attend. Once we knew everyone was picking the same session, we could then pick something else and cover more ground.
   
   ( Five More Under the Cut )
   
   Overall, PPWC was both worth the money and the time spent away from my current project. I will be back next year, which happens to be the 20th anniversary! I hope some of you can join me.

What's funny to me is the amount of posts kicking 2010 out the door because it was so terrible for them. The way I see it, every year is filled with ups and downs. That's the way of things. Even broken down to a monthly or weekly level, we have moments of warmth and cold. Why, as humans, do we find it so easy to recall the bad memories over the good ones? Or is it that it takes 5 times as many good things to make up for one bad? 2008 was probably my best / greatest year in the past five years. I met up with fantastic people in Spain, then we went to France, then to the UK. I began running and lost 50 lbs. Confidence and a little crazy soon followed. I dated and broke hearts. But I'll never forget that that year my paternal grandmother died. The grief of that lingers. Not every day, sure. But I think about how much I miss her more than I think about the times I had overseas, etc.

Still, I think at this time of year it's important for me to set goals and make a grand-scale "To Do List" for 2011. In years past I've written down 12 goals for the following year; one for every month (although some were things that would be started and continued throughout the following 12). Here's my list of 12 resolutions for 2011:

1. Continue playing guitar and learning songs and chords.
   
2. Write a song. Play it. Sing it. Record it. Post it. Regret sharing.
   
3. Run!
   
   • 10k in April
     
   • Half-marathon in August
     
   • Full marathon before the end of 2011 (it's the 2500th anniversary of the first Marathon!)
     
   • Get more comfortable on the Vibram's
   
   
4. Write!
   
   • Finish total rewrite of HyVee
     
   • Finish draft of Underneath. Rinse. Repeat.
     
   • Continue Saturday Shorts
     
   • Find a home for one (or two or all) of my shorts
   
   
5. Take SCUBA lessons and get certified
   
6. Cage-dive with Great White Sharks! (Location TBD)
   
7. Grow out hair
   
8. Become an All-Time Vegan instead of a Part-Time Vegan (look, cookies and pastries are so damn good -- even when they make me break out in hives)
   
9. Travel somewhere new (in-state, in-country, out-of-country, wherever)
   
10. Mail books, presents, other items ASAP
    
11. Re-vamp blog. Big things are planned for this space >:D
    
12. Learn how to make Thai Curry and have people over to eat it

2011: I'm prepared to work for what I want. Be prepared to REWARD ME WITH IT!