No News Is...No News

Cover photo comic credit to Tom Gauld

Being an author is kind of weird. You can have times where you are writing, selling, and publishing constantly, one thing after another. It’s great! And then there are times when you aren’t doing a single one of those things—for months, even—and that’s considered normal.

So, welcome to this totally normal newsletter where I…have absolutely nothing to announce. Zero. Zilch. Zip. No new stories written, sold, or published in the last month. No new interviews or appearances. Nothing to report.

It happens.

But consistency is key when working as an author. You have to keep on working in order to get to those periods of stuff actually happening, so I am still putting out this newsletter this month with some fun tidbits to tide us all over until next month where, fingers crossed, I will hopefully have something new to announce.

Until then, let’s have some fun.

Writing Desk Wednesday with SFWA

I recently purchased a brand new desk for my writing space and am loving it. It’s two tiered and can transition to a standing desk. This lovely desk was featured on SFWA’s Instagram page for their Writing Desk Wednesday posts, so please behold my new desk and my old writing pals: Ty the tiger and Po the hippo, collectively referred to as “Typo.”

2024 Stats from The Grinder

I, like many writers, am addicted to responsibly use The Submission Grinder to keep track of my short fiction stories, submissions, acceptances, and rejections. Here’s a quick peek at the year thus far in Grinder Stats:

Submissions: 57
Acceptances: 2
Rejections (Form): 44
Rejections (Personal): 8

I know that doesn’t look like much, and it maybe even looks downright depressing (feels it sometimes, too), but that’s actually a marked improvement from past years, and significant progress for only halfway through the year. I, personally, try to get at least 10 submissions out each month. Sometimes that's easy because I send stories out as soon as I get them back rejected, so if I’m raking in the rejections, I’m tallying up the submissions as well. Other times it’s hard because markets are closed, or the places that have my stories are taking longer to get back to me and don’t allow simultaneous submissions (sending a story out to more than one market at a time). That’s the game. But these stats show that I am not only on track to meet my submission goal, but I have already seen success this year with those two acceptances, and a decent chunk of my rejections are personal, meaning they either made it to final rounds with the magazines or the editors liked it enough to comment on it rather than just form it out. That’s not nothing in the short fiction world.

Top of the TBR

While there hasn’t been much happening with my writing life, my reading life has ramped up significantly. I have a goal to read 50 books this year, and I have reached the halfway mark of 25 right on time. A good chunk of those books belong to the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire. I highly recommend you check them out. It’s a fantastic series. Technically many of the books are standalone, but I really don’t know why you’d want to stop at one or two. I’m reading them all! They do contain some heavy material, so mind the content warnings, but give them a read if the description strikes your fancy.

Shameless Plug

It wouldn’t be a proper newsletter if I didn’t at least mention my work. So, while I don’t have anything new to share, you can still check out some of my older short stories. A personal favorite of mine, and still recent enough to have that new story smell, is “They Will Dance Among Planets.” It’s deeply meaningful to me, published with an awesome magazine, and, best of all, is totally free to access, so why not give it a read! You can check it out at the link below:

And that’s all the not-quite-news I have for you this month. May the odds be in my favor to receive some acceptances this month so I can share them with you in the next newsletter. Until then…

Keep on writing on.

—Catherine