What I've been up to

I'd been busier than usual over the last week, so I figured I'd leave an update on what I've been doing lately. Other than the usual couple of reviews I write every week I've been researching flash fiction markets and I ordered a whole bunch of how-to books.

On the flash fiction front I've been researching all the markets I can find and I managed to get a pretty good list of markets which I've listed below.

Duotrope's Digest - This is a listing of fiction and poetry publications that you can search through. You can search by genre, word count, payscale and more. There's also an online submissions tracker.

Horror Factor - This is an offshoot of Fiction Factor, and it has a downloadable listing of links to paying and non-paying horror fiction markets from around the world. Fiction Factor has links to markets in other genres as well including: romance, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, short-fiction in general, and non-fiction.

Ralan's Webstravaganza - This is a huge listing of markets, mostly for speculative fiction.

Easy Way to Write Paying E-zine Fiction Markets - I literally just found this, so I have no idea if the links are up to date, but I will be checking them out.

Now to shamelessly plug myself. If you're in the market for a dark fantasy, flash fiction piece feel free to contact me.

I also ordered four how to books for romance novels and one for freelance writing. I originally wanted to order two, but there's something about buying online with someone else's credit card that makes you go kind of overboard. I bought them all second hand though. No way could I afford brand new books. Some of them are a bit old, but the reviews were good, so I figured I'd give them a shot. I'll post short reviews once I've read them in case that might be able to help anyone. Here are the books I ordered:

• On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells
• Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies
• The Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Your Romance Published
• How to Write Romances
• 102 Ways to Earn Money Writing 1,500 Words or Less: The Ultimate Freelancer's Guide

Tomorrow is Oscar Sunday, which for me is like Christmas and the Super Bowl wrapped up in one. My Oscar article will be in the newspaper tomorrow as well. It'll be a big Oscar blowout section in the paper which is exciting. By the way if you haven't seen if yet, I really recommend you watch A Prophet. Don't let the subtitles scare you, it's amazing. I dare you not to fall in love with lead actor Tahar Rahim. If only the Academy was kinder to non-English language films. Oh well. Enjoy the ceremony tomorrow.

What have you been recently doing with your writing? Editing, submitting, reading?

Photos courtesy SXC and iStockphoto.com