John Woodington The official site for the author.

Hilary Duff’s Literary Master(fall to)piecesPosted by John Woodington on March 22nd, 2010

Little by little, I get further and further in my editing of my novel AlieNation, and little by little, I find that I’m liking what I’m seeing.  Apparently the first draft was written when my writing skills were feeling juiced up, because things are connecting, and that makes me happy.  Every once in a while I stumble upon a phrase or line of dialogue which I’d forgotten I’d wrote, and it makes me laugh.

In related news, I posted a short little poem to Fictionaut today, and I’m hoping for some good reviews.

In not-related news, I read about this book deal in my Publishers Lunch today:

Hilary Duff’s multiple-book YA series, starting with ELIXIR, combining the allure of a dangerous love triangle with thrilling international adventure as a young photojournalist travels the globe in a race to unravel a centuries-old mystery that could unlock the key to her soulmate’s true identity and the secret of her father’s disappearance.

So now you have something to put on your Christmas list for this year, under the category of “Works of High Literature I’d Like to Own.”

America Loses a Giant – J. D. SalingerPosted by John Woodington on January 28th, 2010

We lost Salinger today.  His short stories are, for me, some of the best examples of creativity in the form.  I’ve got Catcher in the Rye on the shelf, waiting to be read later this year.  Salinger avoided the public eye, and apparently wrote a bunch of books that he never brought out for publication.  Maybe we’ll see them posthumously, like Pirate Latitudes.

There’s a writing competition over at Writer’s Digest that’s worth checking out, though apparently I should’ve known about this competition prior to this, considering it’s been going on for 79 years.  My bad.  I’ve only been around for 26 years and a few months, so you can’t blame me too much.

I’m still enthralled with Fictionaut, and the quality of the writing posted there just keeps getting better and better.  It is so far the only site I’ve found that has users posting literature worth reading.

Time for sleep.

“Visitation Hour” Up at FictionautPosted by John Woodington on January 22nd, 2010

A quick Friday post to tell you that if you didn’t get a copy of the recent issue of Eye Contact containing my short story “Visitation Hour,” you can now view that story on Fictionaut.  It is right here.

I love weekends.

New Puzzler Backronyms and Novel UpdatePosted by John Woodington on January 19th, 2010

The new Puzzler competition at Narrative sounds like a good one, and I’m pretty excited to see what kinds of “Backronyms” I can come up with.  What is a Backronym you ask?  Why, it’s a normal word whose letters have been used to make and appropriate acromyn.  Such as “Cop” – Constable On Patrol.  So you take any word you want, and come up with a spiffy acronym for it.  I can’t wait to try.  Off the top of my head:

• Blog – Bad Listing on Google
• John – Just Open His Novels
• Acronym – A Crappy Reference One Never Yneeds Mbecausetheysuck

 Or something like that.  At least it isn’t trivia this week.

I’ve rewritten the first chapter of my novel AlieNation, and I think it is much better.  Turns out I didn’t have much dsescription about…anything, which was pretty crucial considering what goes down in Chapter One.  Or, I should say, what goes up.

Be on the lookout for an unbelievable picture of me confronting one of the scariest beings in Minnesota on a lonely, frozen lake.  It may involve beer….

Finally, I love Fictionaut.  Have I said that before?  Well, nevertheless, it bears repeating.

Narrative Puzzler, T.C. Boyle, ePublishing, and War and Peace…whew!Posted by John Woodington on December 2nd, 2009

So there’s a new Puzzler challenge this week from Narrative Magazine, and it’s one in which you have to answer six questions about memoirs.  I think that calling this sort of challenge a “Puzzler” is misleading and inaccurate–it should be called a “Test Your Googling Skills” challenge.  Or something like that.  I knew none of the answers to the six questions.  Then I went onto Google.  Now I know all the answers.  And I sent them in.  We’ll see.

I mentioned I’ve been accepted to write  fiction on the Fictionaut website.  It was nice to see that T.C. Boyle is on there as well.  Everyone is contributing high-quality work, which makes me happy.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the pros and cons of ePublishing lately.  Here’s one of many places where this topic is discussed.  I want to read up on it some more before I discuss it in length here, but I’m sure I’ll rant about it soon.

Finally, I’ve got a hundred pages left to read in War and Peace.  This thing is a beast, but it’s nearly conquered.  Then I’ll read some critical analysis on it, and transition over to my newest copy of the Missouri Review, which has been sitting on my shelf with plaintive eyes, patiently waiting for me to pick it up and read it through.

KarmaPosted by John Woodington on November 30th, 2009

My last post was to announce that I’d received notification that a short story of mine has been accepted for publication. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I received three rejections for three different stories. That’s okay. I figure it’s a form of writer karma. You know, something great happens (publication) and then something not as great happens (rejections) to balance out the greatness of the great thing that happened.  As it happens, all of the rejections were very nice, especially the one I received from Narrative magazine, in which they declined to offer me fame and fortune for a short story of mine, which I had submitted to their “30 Below” competition.

Dear John Woodington,

Thank you for entering “Memorial” in the Narrative 30 Below Contest. Your work was carefully read and considered by several of our editors in a field of compelling entries from all around the world. Many of the entries deserved repeated readings and, like yours, received close attention from our editors.

In the end, however, we could choose only three winners and ten finalists, and hard choices had to be made. We regret that your entry was not one of our winners or finalists this time. We’re grateful that you gave us the opportunity to read your work, and we hope you will keep Narrative in mind for your work in the future.

An announcement of the winning stories will soon go out to the magazine’s readership.

Again, thank you for your entry, and please accept our kind wishes.

Sincerely,

The Editors

Now wasn’t that nice?  A form letter, yes, but at least it’s longer than one sentence, and at least it takes up a full page of an email.  It’s a little disheartening when I receive a rejection letter in the mail that is smaller than a postcard, and is obviously cut from a page of many rejection slips that are sent out to many authors.  I use those slips as bookmarks sometimes, so I guess they do serve a useful purpose.

In other news, I did not go out shopping early on Black Friday, but instead decided to make my purchase online around noon.  I bought a netbook (a Dell mini 10v), and now I am terribly excited for it to arrive at my house.  I’ll post a review of said netbook once I’ve used it enough to review it intelligently.

In still other news, I have been accepted to write and post at Fictionaut, which is putting out some really great writing by really great writers.  I have found it extremely refreshing to see writing of the caliber that is being published at Fictionaut, so I say thank you to them.

Thank you also to my alma mater, who put a blurb about me in their alumni newsletter.  Go Blugolds!