Tag: Dell Award

An Unexpected Writing Party

I am delighted to announce that my story “Naming Angelo” was named the second runner-up for the 2015 Dell Magazine’s Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Check out the official announcement here. I won’t be able to attend the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts this year, but I’m still very excited about this.

 

“Naming Angelo” takes place during the Italian Risorgimento, the fight for Italian independence and unity in  the 1860s, and focuses on what I like to think of as the dark underbelly of naming magic. It’s a little quirkier and more experimental than the stuff I usually write, and of the several stories I submitted , it was honestly the story I kept forgetting about, because I thought there was no way it would place. Which just goes to show that sometimes great things happen when you least expect them. You never know what will happen, so you can never count yourself out.

New Years Resolutions Take 2

Back in January, I wrote a post about my New Year’s resolutions, and now, at the beginning of September, I thought it might be a good idea to check in on how I’ve done, celebrate some successes, and renew the ones that could use some renewing.

 

1.  Post on Facebook Every Day:

 

To be entirely honest, I haven’t posted on Facebook every single day this year, but I do almost every day, and I have gotten myself into the habit of actually using Facebook like a normal person, which was the goal underlying the “post every day” bit. So I declare this resolution a success.

 

2.  Reach 200 rejection letters or get published, whichever comes first:

 

I’m not going to say exactly how many rejections I have because I don’t want to share and no one really wants to know that, but in all likelihood, I will reach 200 by the end of the calendar year.

 

On the other hand, I have made 200 a moot point. After 137 rejections, my story “The Year of Salted Skies” was named the third runner-up for the 2014 Dell Award, and after 150 rejections, my story “The Collector” was accepted for publication at Cast of Wonders! And it was published .

 

Victory!

 

3.  Blog semi-regularly:

 

So…

 

About that…

 

I could make all sorts of excuses for why I haven’t blogged—finishing my thesis and taking my honors exams, applying to graduate schools, waiting to hear from said graduate schools and from the Fulbright, graduating, preparing for a year in Italy, expanding the World War II Italy novella into a full length novel, all that important stuff. But I am not going to bemoan or attempt to excuse my lack of blogging activity. Instead, I am going to renew this resolution. 2014 is not over yet, and the new school year is about to begin. This year I will be teaching instead of learning, and this is strange and a little scary to me. Also Italy, which is awesome and must be blogged about. So I will make a new school year’s resolution to blog more. Please pester me if I don’t.

 

But, lack of blogging aside, I have to say, this has been the year! I graduated from college! I got a Fulbright scholarship to teach in Assisi, Italy! And I got published! And if I did all that—and kept my Facebook resolution—then I will get better at blogging.

 

And once I get better at blogging, maybe I’ll figure out this thing called Twitter.