Playground of a Lesser God Just in time for Halloween, I’m pleased to offer my short story, Playground of a Lesser God, online for free! Alone in her abandoned neighborhood on Halloween night, 10-year-old Elena is surrounded by ghost memories of her past. On the ruined playground where she used to go with her little sister, she solves a puzzle, uncovers a unique invention and is given the gift of hope for her future—but not before experiencing the scariest night of her life.S

All these months of an invisible writing website doesn’t mean that I haven’t been writing however. I have been working hard and steadily on a fantasy novel. My goal for a finished first draft is the end of June. And, at long last, Tesseracts Twenty will be out in ebook format soon and in print in the fall. It promises to be a fantastic anthology and will include my story, “No Others Like Us.” It is good to be back. #anthology #NancySMWaldman #fiction #Writing #fantasy

The folks at Metasagas Press have announced that Futuristica, Volume 1 is ready for pre-orders in all the usual formats. My story “Hu.man & Best” is right there between those covers somewhere. Can’t wait to see it! Click over to their site for all the options. #anthology #sciencefiction #Futuristica #MetasagasPress #preorder #Writing

People tell me not to call myself “old,” as if denying it will change the truth of it. (My mom is still well at 97, so I have it in perspective.) Maybe they believe that it’s a sign of depression or giving up to think of oneself as old. But, to me, it’s just a fact of which I’m reminded frequently because my colleagues at Third Person Press, my “tribe” from Viable Paradise, my writing group, and most of the people in the writing forums I habituate are considerably younger tha

Thrilled to be included in this line-up! #anthology #sciencefiction #book #sale #BundoranPress #LazarusRisen #authors #NancySMWaldman #fiction #publication #Writing #shortstories

Third Person Press–the indie publishing house run by Sherry D. Ramsey, Julie A. Serroul and me–is now open for novel submissions from Atlantic Canadian writers. Click over to read our submission requirements and guidelines. We hope to keep receiving submissions on an on-going basis. However, if we get inundated, we will close until we catch up. Before submitting, please check the TPP website to make sure we’re still open. Overview Writers from Atlantic Canada The first 3 chap

#anthology #sciencefiction #collection #speculativefiction #Campbelleligible #JohnWCampbellAward #fiction #Writing #fantasy

Oh yes. That little thing called “Weekend Warrior.” This is an in-house contest run by participants of the Codex Writing Forum—specifically Vylar Kaftan along with lots of help from other participants. The challenge is to write a new flash piece (750 words or less) from Friday evening to Sunday night and upload it to the site in order to be judged by your incredibly talented peers. And, to do this five weekends in a row. Whee! This was my first time and I pretty much hated it

First of all: Yay! I remembered how to construct a rudimentary html table. Some things we never forget: how to ride a bike, how to make a table on the Internet… YEARSubmittedAcceptedPersonal RejectionsForm Rejections 20139102 2014191513 20154141025 It’s nice to see evidence of the progress I’ve made in the last three years as a writer. I only started keeping records online using The Submission Grinder after coming home from VP in October 2013. Before that, I had a WordPerfect

leaps and bounds 2015 was my best writing year BY FAR. *leaps and bounds* That the year was also extremely challenging on a personal level is just the way it so often happens, isn’t it? There’s a reason we remember Dickens’ best of times/worst of times quote. But if you have to go through hard times, I can recommend having some professional successes to ease the way. I started 2015 with a goal to sub as many stories as often as I could. I ended up with over twice as many as 2

The other day while we were taking our evening walk, he told me about a “stupid mistake” (is there any other kind?) he’d made. Then he quoted the man who taught him carpentry, saying, “The sign of a good carpenter is the ability to cover up your mistakes and make them work.” This is a concept I’m familiar with. In art, we do this. You make a mistake in an oil painting, it’s no problem, just repaint it. That’s trickier in watercolor, but perfection is elusive at best, so you f

Yes, there was a wedding in the middle of June which took me away for a week, but other than that, I’ve been home—even more than usual. And yes, I’ve needed to spend a lot of time working on the lay-out and typesetting of the Grey Area manuscript. That is now, I’m happy to report, at the proofreading stage. Almost ready! Release in late October! And yes, there’s the Grey Area Inidegogo campaign, now just finishing its first week. Visit us here and pick out one of our perks to

My indie publishing house, Third Person Press, decided to put together a ghost story anthology because we get more ghost story submissions than any other kind, too many for our other anthologies where we like to have a nice mix of genre sub-types. The resultant book, Grey Area, will be released in late October, just in time for Halloween. 😉 I had never written a ghost story before and in writing one for this collection, I finally clued into why people like them. They give a

Hey, we all know it. Writers sit too much. And the longer we sit, the more we read about how damaging sitting is. It’s enough to make us too depressed to exercise! But there’s no way around it, writing is sedentary work…or is it? After coveting Sherry D. Ramsey’s treadmill desk for about six months, I finally convinced my husband Barry to help me set up one of my own. Yes, we were both afraid I might not use it after going to the expense and trouble. But I had thought about i

Last year, an online acquaintance—Gary Henderson—from my Second Life writing group—The Quillians—got accepted to Viable Paradise Writer’s Workshop. I had never heard of it. I now know how “out of it” that makes me…but the point is that I finally did hear of it. I was impressed with what Gary had to say about it because if anything, his enthusiasm was greater after the experience than before, and that’s saying something. I decided, sometime during the ensuing year, to apply. I

For the last week or so, I’ve been working on the novel I wrote in November during NaNoWriMo. Today I admitted to myself, that while effort has been expended [passive voice has been used], I’m flailing. I’ve been changing this, changing that, working obsessively on that all-important opening scene, but with very little strategy in mind. My novel’s in pretty good shape considering it was written in a month. I started at the beginning and moved through it in an orderly way. I u

As for the book itself, I’m still not sure about my title, “Plasticity.” I like it and it fits the subject matter, but it probably sells nothing. Perhaps that’s something to worry about three years from now when I’m still whipping the story into shape. Or…maybe it could be the title of the series. Hah. I know what that is. It’s my Delusions of Grandeur, which rise to the surface when I’ve just completed a first draft…of anything! Here’s my pitch: A young scientist reluctantly

The thing I’m most proud of after successfully finishing NaNoWriMo is that I made no foolish pledge to blog everyday during the month. The first five days I wanted to. It was a good feeling to complete my main course and then finish off with a little blogging dessert. But after day five, the novel filled me up. I got a lot of pleasure knowing that I hadn’t made a stupid public promise to blog the process! Now, having completed the month in fine form and having had a couple of

from Astute Graphics Today, my main character showed her character. Up to now, she’s been more self-involved and confused than anything else—for good reasons—but, that had to change. Even though she still has more questions than answers, she reached a point where she had to take a stand, to declare herself on one side of the conflict or the other. I’m proud to say that she did it unflinchingly, in a way that provides no possibility of turning back. She can’t undo what she did

Today, I could not get to The Point. I planned on writing the MC’s Fateful Decision. That point at which she makes a decision that will forever change her life and set up the action for the rest of the book. Without this, I could ramble on about the situation she’s in for chapters and chapters, but there would be no point, would there? I know what her Fateful Decision is. I know I want it to happen as soon as possible, so I was shooting for it to happen in Chapter Three, thir