Welcome to my journal. The purpose of this is to detail my continuing struggle, er mission, to get published in the fiction markets; specifically in the SF/fantasy/horror/suspense markets. I've been writing seriously for about 7 or 8 years now, sending my stories out, and collecting an ever-growing mountain of rejection letters. IMHO, my fiction has gotten much better recently, as a result of emerging from a crippling six-month writers' block a couple of years ago. My largest work to date is a novelette called "Dance of the Harlequin", weighing in at 8900 words or 39 pages in Courier New 12 point font. I've sent the story to Viable Paradise, a week-long writers' workshop that meets in October at Martha's Vineyard. This year the teachers include James Patrick Kelly, a fantastic writer and buddy of mine, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, one of the head honchos at Tor Books and editor of the Starlight anthology series, to which I have sent two stories, both sent back. A woman in my writers' group attended last year and had a blast. I hope I get in.

Also, as an ambitious venture, I have started adapting "Dance of the Harlequin" into graphic novel script format. "Graphic novel" is a fancy way of saying comic book. Neil Gaiman likes to use this analogy--comic book:graphic novel as hooker:lady of the evening. Usually a graphic novel is a more literary form of comics, where the story means more than the art. Though it wouldn't be a "graphic" novel without the art, so illustration is still very important. But I have the feeling you will never see Jim Lee or Todd McFarlane or Mike Madureira doing a graphic novel. And I have found how different writing a GN script is from prose. You play God when you write anyway, but when I write prose, I see it happening in my head only as a vague, formless thing. But writing a script requires you to be like a movie director, describing what the shot in each panel will look like. It's turning out to be a lot of fun, and I've already got the first nine pages finished.

So I hope you stick with me as I struggle to break into the business. It's gonna be a bumpy ride, but it's never bad when you've got friends along.

If you've come to my journal by other pathways, please check out the rest of my website at jasonlundberg.com.

JEL