Bite sized horror--delicious!

I've just found a wonderfully entertaining e-zine for horror micro fiction: Micro 100.

Lots of wonderfully twisted mini-stories in there; the March 2009 issue is particularly awesome. Go check it out!

ETA: I can spell... really... *fixes title*

~Merc

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Another vote for insanity

Dr. Dume is always reliable for madness (including maniacal laughter-inducing insights) and his recent terrible ruminations on insanity and sanity and the evils of the later is insanely brilliant.

Do go check out The Terrible Sanity.

~Merc

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Pulp!

I've discovered The Nostalgia League, which is made of win. *sighs fondly* Old pulp stories, art from magazine covers, old time radio shows and more... it's just awesome.

By the way, if you've not read it, you should read "Farewell to the Master". 'Tis awesome. (Sci-fi and the basis for the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.)

*wishes she had found this way before now*

Enjoy!

~Merc

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And behold, there was Net

Verily.

*glows radioactive with excitement*

At long last, the elder gods have awoken--I mean, well, I'm hooked up to the 'Net and can finally get back to my slacking in posting, and catch up with blogs.

Tremble in fear, world. Merc has returned. %-)

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Zombie food!

...Shall be made and canned out of stories that begin with "MC woke with a start." Or similar cliches.

I swear to the infernal reaches of my lair, if I see one more opening like this I'm starting a zombie canned goods plant. I'll have plenty of material to use in the processing, clearly.

Yes, I've been reading submissions on Critique Circle. But I see this elsewhere too... it's empty filler for zombies, I admit, but hey, it's cheap and plentiful and you just mark the cans "Brains" and they won't know the difference until they're hungry an hour later. %-)

~Merc

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I'm not dead. Not even zombified (shocking, I know)

In fact, I'm moving. :P

So, the utter lack of posting, commenting, etc, is entirely due to this Process From Hell. Sometime next week *crosses fingers* we should be set up (with net, I'm so in withdrawal) and the usual chaos will ensue.

Ta,

~Merc

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That's a nice start to April!

I had no idea, but a 140 character story I'd submitted to the Twitter mag Thaumatrope was published today. :P

I've titled this one "Some Days" for lack of anything better. (My handle is Merc_hyn_di on Twitter.)

lol

Well, a surprising but nice start to the month. ;)

~Merc

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Necromancer Horses and Undead Pirates: March Recap

(For the record, I think April Fool's Day is a spectacular waste of time--because everyone suspects your prank. I usually wait to spring my zombie-laden surprises on people on a different day, when they won't be on guard. %-))

I'm fairly sure I'm going to give up on setting specific goals soon... I never actually remember them, and no, it wasn't the zombies getting into my brains again.

GOALS SET IN MARCH

- get the minotaur/wolf-girl short edited and ready to sub
(Bwha ha ha! So, I actually managed this, thanks to wonderful help from the Feral Biologist.)

- finish the two shorts begun in Feb (my "Rail" short and the Sleeping Beauty re-telling)
(The fairy tail retelling spawned into completion. Zilch on the mental/time-looping short.)

- write ch 4 of RIVEN
(See me laugh. Ha. Ha.)

- edit TIH ch 2 (I'll keep it simple)
(*groans* Nope.)

- finish my JFF novel
(I'm pleased--I finished the "just for fun" story. It's about 14,000 words of pure random Armageddon chaos.)

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED

Novels
This month didn't suck as badly as I'd thought. Happiness! On my dark fantasy novel, NECROMANCER FALLEN, I managed about 8,900 words--the most progress on it in months.

I began my new JFF, this time an adult fantasy/steampunk titled TSASHI. (You can read the first sentence here if you want. :P) It attacked me and demanded I write the first page. I laughed in its face and wrote an entire scene instead.

*refuses to mention Kuso lest he be inordinantely encouraged*


Short Stories
Five finished shorts--I'm pretty happy with the results. Sparky's fairy tale retelling ended up weird and with slash (why am I not surprised :P). There was a random short about a dude who stalks Death. I probably commited some unforgiveable sin by writing a Black Beauty short involving bringing Ginger back to life to seek revenge...

It was the month to finish long-ish shorts. I finished the SF/borerline western with cyborgs and gentically engeineer chimera short at 8k. Then there was the Maggot short, complete with undead pirates, cults of ghouls, animated stone elephants, and the most chronically unlucky assassin still alive. (7k)

I also ended up revising/editing a handful of shorts, including an urban fantasy (it's a prequel short to my novel-that-should-be-edited-but-isn't TIME IS HELL), a permits 'verse short (see To Market, Before the End, and Unpermitted for others), and the zombie octopi short. *is chuffed*


Other writing stuff
Not much. I outlined a novella, wrote TSASHI a blurb, and *gasp* did some crits.


Random trends of the month
Clockwork and the undead.

. . .I wanna do something with clockwork zombies now.

*focuses*

Yup, everything from a zombie octopus invasion, Death personified, undead pirates, zombie horses, and plans for resurected dead imortals (don't ask)... it was quite the month for the walking corpses.

As for clockwork, well, it's more in the planning stages, but Kuso's novella that shall not be named involves a gearwork jaguar, and TSASHI has something going on with the clockwork black market... all right, fine, I just wanted to mention clockwork zombies. :P (How cool is that?)

OVERALL

Total word count: rounded off to about 34,000. I think I managed to write something almost every day, which I'm pleased with.

Satisfaction level: pleased. I got more than I anticipated done, I actually finished some shorts I'm pleased with, and I made progress on NF. Wheee! Hopefully we're out of the sucky winter months and weather related depression now...

Alas, blogging in general sucked. Oh well.

How'd your March go? Get anything you're really happy with done?

~Merc

P.S. It occurs to me I keep listing goals I never actually, you know, post on my blog to begin with. :P Not that I know how many really care about it... I'm mostly using it as a record of what I do this year.

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