Over on my Facebook page, I’m live-blogging the lunar eclipse.
Monthly Archives: January 2018
Brace for impact!
Assume your crash positions, Abyss & Apex editors, we will be open to submissions in two days!
Did you all know we get about 2,000 subs in a week when we are open?
Speaking of stats, here are only some of the statistics we sent to Locus that will be showing up in their February 1, 2018 issue, which focuses on SF&F magazines.
In 2017 A&A seems to have had a huge leap in readership, almost double our readers the previous year. For our average unique visitors per month (discounting one month we were hacked) was 18,400.
A&A tallies our percentage of women writers AFTER the year is over, just to see where trying for good stories with no quotas gets us. A&A published 40% female writers, which is slightly below our usual 41-43%
Get the February edition of Locus to see who we at Abyss & Apex think are authors to watch.
New Review of Confessions
I woke to a nice surprise this morning, with another five-star review of Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer waiting for me with my morning coffee. This one is by a male engineer who really enjoyed it.
Wendy Delmater is a study in determination, tenacity, and grit. This story humbled me, inspired me, and made me laugh out loud. It brought me back to some of the inanity I’ve experienced working as a young engineer at government labs. I wish it were fiction, so I could wait for the sequel.
Thank you, sir!
article up at Authors Publish
My article on “How to Write a Hook” is up at Authors Publish Magazine. You can subscribe for to them for free! Great market tips.
In other news my revamped 2018 Better Dating Though Engineering for Men ebook and new paperback will be available on Valentines Day.
And I’ve just sent another new short story into the ether. Next I get to do all sorts of nice tax things for Abyss & Apex. Then, more word count and work on getting Mime, the other half of the duology that is Mime and Sands of Mime, finished. These bills aren’t going to pay themselves.
Another pitch accepted!
I love it when a client in their “head’s up” that one of my articles is about to be published, and they give me a deadline the other two pitches they accepted. I sent them another pitch with my promise to make their deadline, and they accept the fourth article idea as well.
I’ll post links when these non-fiction articles go up in Authors Write.
The first one will be about writing “hooks.”
In fiction news, another rejection on a short story, and more progress on writing a new one. Gearing up for the onslaught of A&A slush on February 1.
2nd round of edits
I’ve just finished the second round of edits for the print version of Better Dating Through Engineering for Men. Off they go to the book designer.
Fly, little book edits, fly!
What I’m reading
I’m currently reading WIN BIGLY, by Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, and not because I am a Trump fan. I’m seeing if I can glean any useful tips on persuasion to apply to book marketing. So far the following quotes have jumped out at me.
Oh heck, yeah. As a New Yorker who moved to the Deep South, that made me laugh out loud. Talking that sounds unnecessarily provocative is indeed what New Yorkers call “talking.” Nice to know Scott Adams realizes it’s just a communication style, not actual aggression. Now, if only my Southern neighbors could get that. (Yes, yes, I will tone it down.)
Here’s another good one:
“Humans are hardwired to reciprocate favors. If you want someone’s cooperation in the future, do something for that person today.”
And this is something I think I already do, but he puts it well:
“Find the sweet spot between apologizing too much, which signals a lack of confidence, and never apologizing for anything, which makes you look like a sociopath.”
Finally, let’s see how I can apply this to selling books!
I’ll do a review on Goodreads when I’m done reading this. Ciao!
Handling sexism with grace and power
This is how a woman can handle the sadly tricky world of gaining respect in an all-male environment! It reminds me of many of the situations in Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer.
After college, Haley moved to Charlotte and took a job as accounting supervisor at a recycling company. Once again she was different, but this time it was because she was the only female executive. At the first board meeting, the president was running late.
“When he came in,” says Haley, “everyone was getting ready, and the CFO at the time said, ‘Nikki, why don’t you get Paul a cup of coffee?’“And I remember not knowing how I was going to handle that, but I knew that however I handled that would impact how they dealt with me going forward,” she says. “So instead of making a scene or embarrassing them, I said, ‘I’d be happy to.’ And so I reached over to my phone and called my assistant, and said, ‘Pam would you please bring Paul a cup of coffee?’“They never did that again.
“If someone says something inappropriate, fix it, change it, don’t ever let it go,” she says. “I think that’s the worst thing you can ever do. But you don’t have to embarrass someone in the process.”
(Source: Clemson World magazine.)
At the ASSE, Lake Murray Training Center
I’m at my monthly meeting of the local chapter of the American Society of Safety 
Engineers. Pleasant news: one of my fellow safety managers is a member of a book club, and they’ve chosen Confessions of a Female Safety Engineer as their next book.
No word yet on the ASSE national construction safety division newsletter or Professional Safety doing their reviews of Confessions. The editors are still reading it. But I may be doing a book table at our local Professional Development Conference.
Now that’s what I call a login
It’s log, log, log.
Like most writers, I try to cut costs on my business, and that includes overhead like heating in the winter. So here’s yesterday’s haul from getting some free firewood from a coworker of my husband’s who lives in a very rural area. It’s all seasoned oak. Our Subaru had no trouble pulling it in four trailer loads but it was a full day’s work.
Fresh air on a cold day, exercise, and we came home to make hot chocolate and built a lovely fire.
And now I am back to work on my next project, a paperback release of Better Dating Through Engineering for Men, with both the ebook and new release updated for 2018.