Writing Day

I've got a day for writing, a whole day for which I've officially gone part-time. So how does this work?

I've been a full-time teacher for nearly 6 years, and after a couple of jobs that weren't as good as they could have been (mainly management issues), I decided that enough was enough. I'm now a part-time supply teacher, four days a week by choice, and the other day is my 'writing day'. It's a day for me to get things in order, do as much writing/editing as I can, hopefully get some stuff sent off and, by the looks of things, update my blog.

Today's a good example. I've got a piece that I'm submitting to Mocha Memoir's 'Avast Ye Airships!' anthology (some adult content on that page. NSFW warning). I've tightened it up and I'm getting ready to submit it. I can't post it here, but I can tell you that it's about airships and dragons. Clockwork dragons.

I've been working on a short sci-fi story that I submitted last week to Daily Science Fiction. It's quite retro, lots of the influences from old Asimov tales in there, but it's set in the Psy-Clones universe. If it doesn't find publication there, I'm at least generally pleased with it. It's called 'Diplomatic Immunity'.

I'm thinking about sending two of my stories to the Stuff You Should Know podcast. For a start, they always like to receive stuff and give a shout-out. Second, both bits I'm thinking of sending, 'Diplomatic Immunity' and 'Eve and the 10,000 Year Clock', were inspired by podcasts of theirs. It might be nice to close the loop and send those in.

I had my first brush with a client properly this week. I applied to do some freelance work writing articles on MMOs, of which I am an avid player. Unfortunately he wanted me to buy ingame currency, something that is explicitly against the Terms of Service, and then write reviews of the experience. I declined. Square Enix work hard to keep my game free of Real Money Trade and I'm not about to make their job more difficult.