Alyce Wilson

It’s taken a while, but I’m finally getting some results from the action I took during my 31 Queries in 31 Days project.

Some of the responses have been rejections, such as from “Poetry” magazine and “Literary Mama.”

However, I’m starting to get some good news, too! I was contacted in response to one of the Elance jobs for which I applied, and I’ve just signed a contract to edit and format several short children’s books.

And just last night I learned that two of my poems, “How to Name a Cat” and “For Lack of a Wheelbarrow,” have been accepted by Miracle ezine. I’m very excited about it, because their mission (and feel) is similar to mine at Wild Violet. Plus, these two poems are personal favorites of mine that I’ve been sending to different places in hopes of publication. It’s great to finally place them somewhere.

News now about my November writing challenges. I wrote stories in response to three out of four of the story challenges of Project REUTSway. I was halfway through the fourth story when I had to throw in the towel due to sickness and an emerging migraine.

I didn’t do as well with Nina Amir’s Write Nonfiction in November challenge, mostly because I spent a lot of time promoting two Kindle promotions: one over Philcon weekend for “The Art of Life” and one over the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend for “Dedicated Idiocy.”

For the month of December, I’m going to focus on putting together “Now with Kung Fu Action Grip.” Right now, I’m still compiling all the possible material (essays, journal entries and poems about my little Kung Fu Panda). Then I’ll get to the rewriting/editing phase and finally the design phase. While I would have liked to have it ready for the winter holidays, I’m going to shoot instead for January or February, when people will be burning through their gift cards. I intend to put together both ebook and print versions of the book.

I’m also going to try to start blogging here about other subjects that catch my interest, so it’s not just about my writing career and writing tips. If you have any suggestions of things you’d like to see me write about, please share them in the comments!