It’s All About Me!

New interview is up at AnnArbor.com.

Scandal!  Sensation!  Secret identities revealed!

Video from the Philip K. Dick Ceremony

Just Like Starting Over

I know, I know.  I vanished.  I’m sorry.  I was trying to do too much and I hit internet overload.

However, I am back.  I have a new blogging plan, a backlog of stuff to post about, new pictures on the iPhone and a bunch of new projects going on.

Lessee, what’s been going on while I’ve been gone?

BITTER ANGELS hit the shelves.

I got featured on John Scalzi’s The Big Idea

I became a member of Book View Cafe.

I once again bought a new Sony eReader.  Review to follow.

Oh, and I found this on the internet.  This proves that there are people out there who have WAY too much time on their hands.  Ladies and Gentlemen: the Star Trek Barbershop Quartet

Reject

I got rejected yesterday.

I’ve been told that a working writer should never blog about their rejections, because editors and agents also surf the web.  But this is supposed to be a blog about the writing life, and getting rejected is most definitely part of the writing life.  It is also one with which I am waaay more familiar than I want to be.

I started getting rejected by professional venues when I was still in high school.  Young Miss was the first publication to turn me down, although they did it with the words “lovely story,” scrawled in the margin of the form letter (this was back in the Jurassic, when all this was done through the mail).  That note, incidently, sealed my doom.  A Real Live Editor had read my story!  And liked it!!  I was rejected and over the moon at the same time, and more determined than ever to become a pro.

The tenth anniversary of that first rejection, I threw a party.  For decorations, I took all my saved rejection slips and taped them together as a banner and hung it up in the living room.  One of my roommates measured the thing and it came in at 55 1/2 feet, almost 5 and 1/2 feet of rejection per year.  I was actually incredibly proud of myself.  I still have that banner, rolled up.  I unroll it for writing workshops to show the students what they’re in for.  If they don’t run screaming, I figure they’ve got a better than even chance of making it as writers.

But somehow, this time, I’m having a harder time bouncing back, let alone recovering my sense of humor.  Maybe it has something to do with getting an e-mail a few hours after The Rejection informing me that an old friend had just made the New York Times Bestseller list.

Congratulations.  No, I mean it.  My eyes have always been this shade of green.  Really.

But then it comes down to the brutal truth.  If I lie down under the disappointment, it’s over.  And then what?  I don’t have a back up career.  Since I was 13 all I ever wanted to be was a writer.  I went through college with that one goal in mind.  When I was single, I paid the rent as a tech writer.  After marriage, when I lost the tech-writing contract (cut-backs in the auto industry, ain’t it always the way?), I went full time freelancing and fictioneering (ooo, new word.  How bad can things be?).

So, this is it.  No grand summing up.  No words of immpeciable wisdom or humor.  Just another day.  I will put on my big girl panties and deal, because I cannot bear to give up.

Welcome Aboard!

Welcome to IN THE FUTURE, TENSE the blog for author Carolyn Louise (CL) Anderson.

ABOUT ME
I’m a new author with my first novel coming out from Bantam Books this summer.  I’m a full-time writer, and a full-time mom.  When not writing or momming, I dance, I sing, I play the fiddle (for certain values of “play”).  I also hike, camp and every so often, try to catch up on my sleep.

ABOUT MY BOOK

BITTER ANGELS is a space opera and a mystery and the story of a woman torn between duty, love and family.  I call it John LeCarre in space.

Bitter Angels, Front and Back Covers

Many thanks to David Pomerico and the Bantam art department for this very, very cool cover.  BITTER ANGELS will be out this summer.  You can be sure I’ll be posting here when I’ve got an exact date.  If you’d like to put in a pre-pre-order, you can do so from Nicola’s Books.

ABOUT THE BLOG
As it turns out, I’m not very good at writing about my own life.  Not on a regular basis, anyway.  I can’t make up fables about my laundry, and my cat doesn’t even do amusing things.  So, this blog will be about writing and reading; the art, the craft, and living the life of the full-time author.  There will be conversation and reviews of books; old, new and Really Old.  I read a lot, and a lot of different things, so there will be reviews of science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, history, biography and anything else that catches my eye.

There will be interviews with authors, agents, editors, songwriters and anybody else I can convince to talk to me.  There will be posts about the art and craft of writing as I see it.  There will be questions posed to other authors about writing and the writing life.

There will be posts about and reviews of the conventions I attend, and probably some of my other travels for fun, business and research.

This is the beginning, and the list of topics will surely expand.

FACEBOOK
The Facebook page is under construction, but there will be one and I’ll make an announcement when it goes up.

TWITTER
Yes, I Tweet.  Sporadically, but I do Tweet as cl_anderson09.  It’s hard to think of new things to say though, because the book’s not out yet, and I have a really boring cat.