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Kelly I. Hitchcock Posts

Meanwhile, in the traditional publishing world…

Published by Kelly on September 3, 2012

Despite my literary fame and bestseller rankings exceeding 50 copies sold, I still make time to submit my shorter works to literary journals the old-fashioned way, including my poetry and short stories. Well, to a certain extent. There are still some journals that are SO old-fashioned with the way they do business I won’t even bother. This includes:

  • Ones that don’t accept simultaneous submissions. If you don’t want my work to ever be under consideration with another journal, but you won’t respond to me unless you accept my work, and it’ll be at least six months before that might happen, have fun.
  • Ones that don’t accept electronic submissions. You want me to print my work? On paper? Then send it… in the mailbox? Okay sure. But first, let me fly on back to 1989.

Last week I had a poem get accepted by a literary journal. I’m always excited and thankful when a journal accepts my work, despite the fact that none of them pay anymore, but I always lament having to withdraw my work from consideration from every other publication I sent it to. For this particular poem, I only had five other journals to inform, and this was how it all played out.

  • The publication that accepted my work received it back in May.
  • Two of the publications I submitted to required that withdrawing one of my poems meant withdrawing them all.
  • Three of the publications I submitted to just earlier this month.
  • One of the submissions I actually had to pay for, just like a contest with an entry fee.
  • The publication that accepted the poem has published my work before.

Compared to the last time I had to inform a bunch of journals that a work of mine was accepted elsewhere, this was much easier. Why? For one, I only submitted electronically, so there was a digital paper trail I could follow just by searching my email and logging in to my submission manager. For another, most of my submissions were done through an electronic submission manager (the costs of which some journals are defraying by passing the cost on to their submitters – see above) so withdrawing from submission was as easy as clicking a button.

Oh, and the number of times I submitted this poem to other journals before it was accepted? 19, as best as I can tell.

Keep your eyes peeled for my poem Culley’s Pub: An Elegy to appear in the next issue of Foliate Oak Literary Journal – whenever that may be.

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Six Sentence Sunday 9/2/2012

Published by Kelly on September 2, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 6 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Sarah, an almost-forty woman looking to get her first tattoo after recreating her life after her emotionally abusive ex-husband, in an attempt to get back to her roots.

It had taken a long time to get here, but she loved living simply, with a great new group of friends, a new career, everything he’d convinced her wasn’t worth her time.  Now, if she could just get back to her old friends.  Those friends in the middle – Jason’s friends – they’d just been filler, and they’d disappeared when her money had.

That was what the Celtic scroll meant to her.  She could trace the interlaced lines of the scroll, weave them through an intricate path of knots, and end up back at the beginning, where things were simple and clean.  It had been a long, jumbled series of paths that had led her here, but she was finally back; she was ready.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Six Sentence Sunday 8/26/2012

Published by Kelly on August 26, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 7 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Alice, a social worker who finds herself getting tattooed with three of her best friends on a long girls’ weekend, but missing the presence of the fifth member of their little group.

Sarah and Karen had always had their own inside thing going on, an inner circle within the inner circle, one the rest of them had always felt but denied existed.  Alice could still remember when Karen was introduced as the new girl in their Kindergarten class, after the Christmas break.  She’d followed them around on the playground until Sarah informed the group (they didn’t have a name for themselves at that point) that it was too mean of them to keep ignoring her, and allowed her in.  Was it really possible to hold a grudge against someone for stealing your best friend more than twenty years ago?  Was that what bothered Alice about Karen so much?  Maybe the pain of the tattoo was just making her delirious.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Six Sentence Sunday 8/19/2012

Published by Kelly on August 19, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 8 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Hallie, a young single mom finishing up her tech school degree so she can move herself and her son out of their Section 8 apartment and she can retouch the tattoo she got in her juvenile delinquent days.

Years ago, Hallie had gotten the tattoo in the kitchen of a friend of a friend who ran with her old crowd, back when looking tough meant something to her. It was supposed to be an artistic rendition of her initials, a drawing she’d done as a kid, but the friend of a friend who’d done the tattoo had been so messed up at the time the tattoo had come out lopsided and jagged, and Hallie had been too messed up to notice. It looked like shit; it really did. She kept telling herself that when she got it all turned around, she’d get it redone and smoothed out. It wasn’t exactly an option when you weighed it against gas money to drive your child to his Grandma’s and yourself to school so you could finally get things turned around. She didn’t need a tattoo to tell her she was tough now; she had the toughest job on the planet already.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Audiobooking ninja!

Published by Kelly on August 13, 2012

I’ll be the first to admit that I am so far behind the curve with the audiobook craze it’s semi-sad. I always said I didn’t think I could get into audiobooks even though people like my mom were into it. I recently figured out that the iPod Touch my wonderful boyfriend got me is perfect for ear-reading.

The first book I ever tried to read via audiobook was Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses. It was for a summer class, and I had a really hard time getting into the book, so I thought I could help myself out by getting the audiobooks from the library to follow along with. Even then, cassettes were a dinosaur means of listening to anything, so I unfairly judged all audiobooks based on a book that was not for me on a medium that no one used anymore. (That was the only class I ever dropped.)

Ten or so years later, I realized that audiobooks were available in a digital format, available on Overdrive from my library (since I am not a bjillionaire who can afford the ridiculous price tag publishers put on audiobooks), and amazing for specific activities, and way better than simultaneously reading and ear-reading.

  • RUNNING: I wish I’d discovered audiobooks back when I was training for my marathon. Now that I live in Texas, running outdoors doesn’t happen all that often, and audiobooks are what keep me sane running on the boring old treadmill.
  • WEIGHTLIFTING: Yep, this is my favorite activity of all time ever. Yes, I am being sarcastic, but it’s an important part of the ole regimen, and listening to an audiobook is a great way to lose count of reps. Not really.
  • SEWING: It’s one of the primary ways I distract myself when I should really be writing, but adding audiobook listening to the mix does at least make me feel a little more productive.
  • PUTTING AWAY LAUNDRY: It might be my least favorite activity of all activities, but I don’t want to delegate it in the event that the clothes don’t get put away in the right place. Dammit, dog, why won’t you pay the same kind of attention to *clean* underwear? Sorry – TMI. My point, audiobooks make it more tolerable.
  • VACUUMING: Yes, you could listen to the buzz of the vacuum, but an audiobook is much nicer.

Not-so-great activities: riding the bus. You’d think it’d work, but it’s a surprisingly crappy experience.

I felt the same kind of ambivalence before I got into e-books, but when I took up e-books, I began reading 2-3 times the amount I did with paperbacks. Now that I’ve added audiobooks to my repertoire, it’s more like 3-4 times what I was reading before. I’ve read 49 books this year, and I feel like a multi-tasking ninja!

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Six Sentence Sunday 8/12/2012

Published by Kelly on August 12, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 9 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Jody, a woman with three kids who’s putting herself through nursing school so she can leave her husband. In this scene, she reflects on the foot tattoo she got for good luck.

Jody rubbed her temples, knowing this would be the most peaceful moment she’d likely experience that day.  They were right in the middle of clinical rotations, eight hours of nonstop chasing after the floor nurses, asking as many questions as you could and trying to keep up.  Her floor nurse was just over five feet tall and weighed over 200 pounds but was harder to keep up with than all three of her spastic children combined.

But, she figured, it came with the territory of being part of a degree program that had “accelerated” at the beginning of the name.  She needed accelerated; she’d already wasted seven years getting a mostly useless Bachelor’s degree in history, in which time she’d managed to punch out three kids and marry a husband who was about as useless as her degree.

It was why she’d gotten the golden koi tattooed on her right foot when she found out she’d been accepted to the program.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Six Sentence Sunday 8/5/2012

Published by Kelly on August 5, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 10 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Beth, a woman who got a tattoo on her honeymoon ten years ago after marrying her husband with cystic fibrosis. As she celebrates her tenth anniversary, she reflects on the permanence of the tattoo.

Charlie sat up to cough, bracing himself with his left arm. Beth’s throat tightened; she could barely even see one year into the future, let alone ten. The tattoo was already starting to fade, the once-black vine now a dark, drab olive green. Why did they always turn greenish instead of fading to gray? Still, if it faded to green, it would only make the rose vine look healthier, more alive, and the edges of the red petals would have the hint of pink they always got when they were at their fullest bloom.

Maybe she’d keep the tattoo after all.

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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Library Bookspotting for July

Published by Kelly on July 30, 2012

As many of you know, I volunteer once a week at my local branch public library. While I would never dream of bashing another author for his or her efforts (yes, even Stephenie Meyer), I often come across books that make me giggle (A Look At Uranus) or just say double-you-tee-eff a few times. Because many of these are just too good not to share, I’ve decided to make this a monthly feature on the site called “Library Bookspotting”. Are you looking for an RSS feed icon? It’s over there —>

I’ll also be live-tweeting a book each week while I’m at the library if you want to watch me on the Twitterz. For now, I’ll just share all the ones I have snapped pics of so far.

Oh yeah, did I mention I am in Texas? Of  course I am, because there is no way this book could exist anywhere but in Texas. For those of you who don’t know, Colt McCoy was the quarterback for the University of Texas, and is a regular folk hero here in Austin. The premise of the book was about Colt’s upbringing on a farm in rural Texas with an evangelical Christian family that worshipped football (as most of Texas does), just in case you couldn’t tell that from the ridiculous cover.

I’ve been curious about the images O’Reilly uses on the cover of their technology books for a long time. A book on XSLT with a horned owl on the cover? I suppose it makes about as much sense as anything else. But this one? Just how does an Olde West-inspired heist, complete with firearms, represent Open Source and Free Software Licensing? Are they implying the software is highway robbery? How could they? It’s free!?

Yes, this is a graphic novel (a young adult graphic novel, I might add) called “Night Head.” Now yeah, I’m sure that this didn’t originate in the US, but you’d think someone would take a second look at the title to make sure it means what you think it means. And definitely before putting in the young adult section of a public library. Yikes.

This is a children’s non-fiction whose sole purpose, I believe, is to train crazy cat ladies from a very young age. For the record, I am a dog person, and I would never tell my dog a riddle because she is too dumb to even understand the difference between food and dirty gym socks most days.

For some reason, mystery books (especially those in a series) have the cheesiest titles I’ve ever seen. For the record, cahoots is one of my favorite words, but even for this feline-themed mystery series, this title is REALLY reaching.

You can find all these books at your local library, but you don’t have to take MY word for it…

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Six Sentence Sunday 7/29/2012

Published by Kelly on July 29, 2012

Welcome back to my 6-sentence snippet series from my book, Portrait of Woman in Ink: A Tattoo Storybook. Over the next 11 weeks, I will be sharing with you snippet from each chapter. (Click here to see last week’s snippet)

Today we meet Lacey, a woman who’s struggled for 4 years to sell the house that she owned with her ex-husband, the last symbol of her old life. She always said when she sold the house, she’d cover up the tattoo she got the day after she got married.

She’d always said she’d treat herself to a Betsey Johnson swimsuit when the house sold, but they’d announced a month ago that they were going out of business. By the time the house sold, she wouldn’t have a chance. Oh well, it made a better early birthday present anyway, Lacey thought to herself, admiring the suit as she relaxed on the chaise. But the tattoo – she couldn’t really cheat with the tattoo. If she covered it up now, it would only remind her that those last ties still weren’t severed. For the millionth time, she pushed a familiar thought from her head… that it would never be over...

That’s all for today! Be sure to check out some of the other talented people over at www.SixSunday.com, and come back to visit next week!

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