100 things #40, decisions, decisions

[jana_denardo]

{Take the 100 Things challenge!}

Budgeting time and weighing which stories I really want to write is always hard for me. I get so many ideas. Many will die still-born. I know that I have three, if not four, major projects I want to finish this year: polish Kept Tears, finish last year’s nano, Soldiers of the Sun, finish last year’s camp nano, Blood Red Roulette and if possible, finish Riding with Strangers.

Even with all that on my plate, I can’t help looking at open calls. I already know I can’t resist Dreamspinner’s steampunk open call. I’ve already started on that, not much but it is started. I’m setting it in an area I used to live in, the Hudson Valley of NY. Hyde Park makes a great background.

I do want to try at least one open call for Storm Moon Press. I’m torn between two (I know if I let myself get carried away, I’ll accomplish nothing). Of the two I’m most drawn to, one has an angel theme and the other is dystopic. Oddly, I have a love-hate relationship with dystopias. Part of it, especially in YA, women get short-shrifted. I loathe that how in almost every one, the world goes to hell and women are slammed back to the dark ages as nothing more than property that can breed. That said, if I’m working on a m/m story, I don’t have to deal with that. Heck for all I know it goes the other way, women are in charge and men are the breeding property (okay, most likely no one ends up mere breeders in my fiction).

Arguably both angel protagonists and dystopias are hot and overdone; I can certainly see what the publisher would want to pile on. There’s a definite market. If pressed, I have to say the dystopia might edge out the angel one but the ideas are still fermenting in my brain.

Thoughts on which way I should lean?

Comments

[laylalawlor.livejournal.com]

I almost put both of these on my list but decided not to, because there were others that appealed to me more. The dystopia one in particular is one that intrigues me, although I agree with you about the way that apocalypse stories deal with female characters, and this would be especially tricky to avoid in an m/m story. Still, there are lots of intriguing possibilities!

[jana-denardo.livejournal.com]

they did have a great many good ones to chose from that's for sure