Gentle readers...

The deadline is March 29 to submit to the literary journal I'm helping to found. We only have twelve submissions so far. Please send us things. Pretty please.

www.stitchjournal.com

Stitch Now Taking Art and Lit Submissions

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am one of the founders of an online literary journal that we are creating for a class, but my group really wants it to become something ongoing.

Here is our mission statement:

Stitch is a student-run literature and art journal based out of the University of Mary Washington. Stitch will showcase works of excellent art and writing that narrate a falling apart or coming together, or which balance in the precarious space between. We take our name and our mission statement from a multifaceted word, and will feature works which illuminate the contradictions and connections of its etymology; rending and mending, as well as the humor and the hurt in those processes. We seek narrativesregardless of medium, and believe that a successful narrative leaves one richer for having experienced it, so make us feel, make us see, and help us create within ourselves.

Here are the guidelines:

During our submission period, we consider submissions of previously unpublished work across multiple mediums. Please take the time to read through this section and familiarize yourself with our submission process. We WANT to see your work! If you have any questions regarding submissions that are not answered here, feel free to email us at stitchjournal@gmail.com.

A note on “previously unpublished”: Any work that’s accessible in a public forum, such as a journal, book collection, or a website searchable via a search engine (such as DeviantART, Flickr, or YouTube) is considered “published.”

Mediums and Genres

Poetry

In all its various forms. Pieces under 1,000 words preferred.

Slam/spoken word poetry

Videos of original performed poetry, submitted with the text performed.

Short essays

Creative nonfiction essays, 1,000-5,000 words.

Short stories

Fiction, 1,000-5,000 words.

Flash fiction/flash essays

Fiction or creative nonfiction between 100 and 500 words.

(Note: the shorter your piece, the more it should read like a punch to the gut.)

Photography

Digital photography and high-quality scans of film photography.

Visual Art

High-quality photos or scanned images of art produced in traditional media (painting, drawing, collages, etc), as well as digital art. We do not consider submissions of 3D art.

We want to see your creations! If you’re having trouble with any part of the submission process, send us an email and we’ll help you figure out how to get our work to us.

To submit words, art and photos:

To submit performance poetry:You can submit performance poetry via a private YouTube video. We are open to accepting submission via other sites but would prefer you use the process below.

Submission Process

• Please email stitchjournal@gmail.com with your piece(s) included as an attachment.

• Use the following template to title the email: “Stitch Submission, [genre]” indicating the genre of your work.

• In the body of your email, include your first and last name, the title and genre of your work,  and a preferred method of contact.

• When you upload your video, select the “Private” option under “Broadcasting and Sharing Options.”

• Add “stitchjournal@gmail.com” to the box prompting you to select email addresses to share the video with. This way only we can see your video.

• Submit the text of your piece to stitchjournal@gmail.com, following the submission guidelines above.

• Keep in mind that good sound and video quality and a clean, uncluttered backdrop go a long way in a video submission. We want your performance to stand out, not where you’re filming or what you’re wearing.
  
  

I ATEN'T DEAD

I have a lot of excuses for why it's been such a long time since I updated. I've been sick. I've been in love (at least that one continues to be true). I've been writing for class. I spend a lot of time on tumblr. My dog is refusing to eat much of anything and we're getting concerned. I've been cranking out baby Jayne hats and soot sprites for my Etsy shop. My celebrity crushes get ever-more pathetic. I have a cramp in my toe. I need to wash my hair. I now have a different google account so I have to log out and log in to my old account in order blog and isn't that a pain? The stars have not aligned.

But cool things are happening, and I finally overcame my inertia sufficiently to actually post here about them. Imagine that.

- I got an A on my fiction seminar portfolio, which largely consisted of the first sixty pages of Seasons Four Behind Closed Doors. It is on hiatus for the time being while I let it simmer and tackle other projects, but I know where it's going and I am confident about this being a good start.

- I'm writing a twelve-poem cycle for a poetry seminar this semester, about the intersection of private love and public politics, and the point of the class is to produce publishable work at some point.

- My current novel-project is to go back, retcon, revamp, and extend the next Laconia book, The Raw Ghosts of Thailand. I've been procrastinating on it like whoa and I really shouldn't because it's going to be dedicated to my Khun Yai (maternal grandmother) and she's not getting any younger. I'm looking forward to either when I get this thing done or when I stop feeling guilty over it, and I think that's doing a disservice to poor Nat and Ferdinand.

- I've accomplished a bunch of ghostwriting projects on Elance writing [redacted] for a client who is hoping to [redacted] and so is paying me to [redacted]. Whee!

- When the submissions period opens, I'm going to apply for Creative Writing Honors, in which I'd read my stuff at a symposium and have a more dignified version of a gold star on my diploma.

- For yet another class, I am in a group where we are making a bona fide online literary journal. We are only required to publish one issue, but my group wants to continue this after graduation, maybe even make it something professional one day. As of the publication of this post we are not yet soliciting work, but we will be in a few weeks, so here's a link: stitchjournal.com

- I'm writing a short story about a woman who gets a heart transplant from a recently dead celebrity, and I think it's going well. I'm turning the first draft in for workshopping next Monday.

That's all for now, I think. I'll try to post more often. Whether or not that actually happens, thank you for reading this, and I love you.

I will be at both!

Eternal Press will present two Meet the Authors Chatroom Sessions at 2PM Eastern Standard Time and 7PM Eastern Standard Time on 7 November 2012 at  http://eternalpress.biz/chat.php.  Door prizes will be given away at each chat. 

Eternal Press Announcement

After a short delay, Eternal Press is pleased to Release a new Batch of Titles...  

Drop by tomorrow afternoon and say hello to the authors.  

Eternal Press Authors Rock!

Eternal Press publishes affordable, quality fiction quarterly.  On November 7, 2012 Eternal Press will release the following titles in various e-book formats.  All titles can be purchased  at  http://eternalpress.bizand will become available at Amazon, Kindle, B & N, Nook and at iTunes. 

Readers, reviewers and authors are welcome to visit the releasing authors during two chatroom Meet the Authors sessions.

The titles and authors follow.

Exodus (Book 3) by Carrie Lynn Barker,            

Magical Redemption (series) by Nicola E. Sheridan,   

Beloved Soul            by Shelly Pratt,        

 The Tarot Killer by Mary Bracht,

Samuel's Girl            by H.K. Hillman,     

Dad and I Are Sort of Human (book 5  in Legends of Laconia, USA series) by Donaya Haymond,         

More Than Mortal by Sonnet O'Dell,       

A Touch To Remember by Rebecca Minto,        

Sound of Distant Oceans by Edward Keller,      

Who Blew Up My Ship? By Rod Spurgeon,       

The Prophecy of the Undead by Fiona McGier,

Angel in My Heart, Devil in My Soul by Linda Hays-Gibbs,  

Heart:  Animal Trilogy by Jacqueline Paige,  

Lokians: Book 2 They Lurk Among Us by Aaron Dennis,       

Demise of the Vampire Queen by Jodie Pierce and

Autumn Leaves by Barbara Winkes.   

Eternal Press will present two Meet the Authors Chatroom Sessions at 2PM Eastern Standard Time and 7PM Eastern Standard Time on 7 November 2012 at http://eternalpress.biz/chat.php.  Door prizes will be given away at each chat. 

Dad and I Are Sort of Human Launch!

Comment, reblog, tweet, facebook like, pin, smoke signal - do absolutely
anything traceable to help spread the word about Dad and I Are Sort of Human by
Donaya Haymond and be entered to win a free PDF copy of the book by 11:59 PM
November 7!

Summary:

Snarky but bighearted 22-year-old Dianne Anghel has just graduated college and
has to move back in with her father, Ferdinand, and their friend Dr. Nat Silver.
She doesn't mind that the two men in her life are vampires - her late mother was
a werewolf anyway - but that makes getting a mainstream daytime job difficult.
Eventually, desperate, she uses her inherited shapeshifting powers to become a
bounty hunter. The local criminals don't take too kindly to this, though.
Neither does Ferdinand. And a mysterious organization is watching the trio's
every move.


Fun places to follow the party over the next 23 hours:

http://www.facebook.com/DonayaHaymond

www.donayahaymond.tumblr.com

http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/dad+and+i+are+sort+of+human


www.thedreammansionofdonaya.blogspot.com

https://twitter.com/donayahaymond

Announcement

Release day has been adjourned to November 7. I'm sure you understand.

Launch day next Thursday!

NOVEMBER 1 NOVEMBER 1 NOVEMBER 1!!!!!!!

I'm proofing the final pdf tonight and tomorrow. In her email, the CEO of Eternal Press mentioned that she likes my sense of humor in the book. :D

A friend of mine is having a sale

Go here for details.

Journal for Creative Writing Seminar

The writing metaphor Annie Dillard uses that most works for me is the concept of writing as a miner’s pick or as a woodcarver’s gouge. It’s like we are faced with some huge, formless mass that is the collective cultural consciousness, and it’s our job as writers – or any other artists – to chip away at what is extraneous to what we are trying to tell in a particular work, and then refine it and polish it into something true. Not just “true” as in “accurate”, but “true” as in “sound”, “plumb”, “solid”, “fixed”. Stephen King in On Writing suggests that things we write are like dinosaur bones, already waiting for us in a rough form deep in the ground. Our job is to dig them up and clean them, eliminating the detritus that is not what needs to be told. It also reminds me of Michelangelo’s quote that he saw an angel in the block of marble, and took away every part of the marble that was not the angel until he had set the angel free.

My own preferred metaphor for writing, one that takes a different tack on the process but seems just as accurate to me, is that of an oyster making pearls. The grit that gets inside an oyster sometimes causes discomfort, sometimes even pain, to the oyster, which coats it with secretions that protect the soft organs from irritation. In time this makes a pearl. Similarly, writers take the grit that is unhappiness – or depression, anxiety, anger, frustration, or just simply wanting answers to why things are the way they are – and coat them with layers of distilled cultural consciousness, as filtered through their own experiences and worldview, to take away the harshness of it. This has a side effect of making something unique. 

Not all pearls are of high “quality”, in that they do not all have marketable luster and smoothness of shape, but all of them have at least done the job of soothing the oyster’s heart and the writer’s soul. The secretions an oyster produces do not come out of thin air. The food an oyster imbibes, that an oyster filters from the water,  is analogous to the stories that we take in from the moment we understand speech. Writers who have a greater, richer background of story and myth will produce greater and richer works. A malnourished oyster’s pearls will never be as good as that of an oyster well fed. The food for creative people is the stories we are told, the stories we seek out, the stories we live. They become the stories we create, because we need them to keep us safe from the roughest portions of life that otherwise would wound us too deeply to go on.

dear also means expensive - notes from peer feedback

Things in Favor:

- tone

- consistent

- form

- good opening

- concrete imagery

- non-cliche

- attention to language itself

- surprising

- relatable

- political dimension takes it beyond simple love poem

- made at least two readers actually tear up (!)

- "excellent first draft"

Things in Waver:

- shorten lines

- ground it

- slow it down

- expand on the "television" concept

- capitalize and punctuate

- let reader breathe

- be more specific and solid

- clarify "the dual meaning of dear"

- italicize foreign words and things in quotes

- reveal more

- break up sentences

- more metaphor & simile

More soon!

dear also means expensive - first draft

womanhood, says the television

is ideally slim and shaved, yet you

are covered in hairs I touch and love,

I with curves and stretch marks you touch and love,

making us, I believe, a danger to society at large.

promise me you'll never pick up a razor

or pluck those lush brows that signal your moods.

in return I will look in the mirror and try to see

what you perceive that so unaccountably makes you deem

my crinkled soul adequately housed

and your glorious tiny bitten-down fingers complemented

in my hands, or as I bring them to chapped uncolored lips.

I am a compassionate person, I hope, but I wonder more

with each day how blind and deaf and without taste the world

has been that hordes do not jostle and cajole

for your every touch and word.

to make you want is the greatest gift

I have been given, to make me content

is a miracle on your part, your voice in Russian songs

where we must not forget the dual meaning of dear,

and your hushed Hebrew prayer for my sorrows

makes me whisper the Thai suteerak, suteerak,

(most beloved of mine)

for though "dear" also means "expensive"

you are worth my fortune and fear.

Creative Writing Fiction Seminar

Hello, gentle readers. Just to alert you that I am taking Creative Writing Fiction, an upper-level seminar, for my second-to-last semester here. My big project will be writing and workshopping three chapters of Seasons Four Behind Closed Doors. Yay!

And I'm also taking Creative Writing Poetry with Pulitzer-Prize winner and delightful human being Claudia Emerson, so some poems will be showing up here as well.

Sally Odgers Interview Mention

Sally Odgers, my longtime mentor and editor, mentioned Halloween Romance as one of her favorite titles in this interview with Boomerang Books.

"Halloween Romance by Donaya Haymond. This is the first of the Laconia series and is the funny, odd story of werewolf Selene Davidson who just wants to get through college without biting anyone by mistake. She’s drawn to melancholy Ferdinand Anghel who has a strange aversion to some kinds of cuisine."

Vacationing in Thailand right now

...And we went to a restaurant/coffee shop/library where my mother noticed that they had a book she had written - third edition, 1997 - about going to study in America as a young Thai woman, where she met my dad. I wish I could read Thai well enough to read it. But anyway I'm proud.

All current titles now available on Nook

Barnesandnoble.com now joins Amazon.com in having copies of all my novels available in both print and ebook.

The one frustrating thing is that they persist in labeling Waking Echoes for Nook as being written by Donaya "Hammond", even though the rest of the books are all correct. And I haven't been able to get it changed yet. You can find it here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/waking-echoes-donaya-hammond/1023617480?ean=9781615721412

The rest are right here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/c/donaya-haymond

More options for readers please me. :D

Cover art for Dad and I Are Sort of Human

Art by Amanda Kelsey
Release date November 1, 2012

500 Words a Day Challenge

Like last summer, I am renewing efforts to write at least five hundred words a day. Most days' installments are being posted at http://www.donayahaymond.tumblr.com/ , unless the content turned out embarrassingly personal. I will still post news and tidbits to this blog frequently but if you are somehow a bizarre (but delightful) person who wants to hear from me every day I would suggest focusing your attention on the tumblr. Happy upcoming U.S. Indepedence Day to all.

Breaking News

Book 5 of the Laconia series, Dad and I Are Sort of Human, will be released November 1st. Hooray!

Join me on Tumblr

I now have a tumblr devoted to my writing self - I have had a private tumblr for nearly a year now - and you are invited to check out Fairytales Can Heal at http://www.donayahaymond.tumblr.com/ .