The home of fiction author Val Gryphin…

So I spent yesterday smoothing out the site. The text should now be consistent overall, I changed the way the links highlight on mouse over, all my contact information is now in one spot - and look over there
<————– there is a page with links to my publishing credits I’m anal about going on over and over until it looks like I want it to, and I think for now that I’m happy with it. The only thing that I don’t like is the “Main” and “Publications” links over there, but I am going to make a couple of graphics for them, so the text links will remain for now. Any comments on the site design are welcome.

I also edited my Twitter box so it doesn’t take up so much room. I have it partly so people can have another way to follow my posts as this blog pings Twitter whenever there is a new post.

I had another short story accepted, this one by Ruthie’s Club, titled “Winter Showers.” I also have received 8 rejections this month, which brings my total this year to 27. I currently have 18 stories out.

And in non-writing news, my daughter has the chicken pox. She had recieved one of the shots in the 2 shot series so far, so even though she tends to catch anything like that very severely, she has a mild case with just bumps and itching. She’s quite pleased however that this means she doesn’t have to have the second shot after this!

My flight leaves in four days, ack so much to do! I am so looking forward to it tho, it will be my first real break since the accident. (Six weeks out of work due to injuries does NOT count as a break.) There is still a lot of reading I need to do to be ready, but I should be fine.

So I have ten stories out right now, which is everything I have polished. I’m still working on getting more polished, but of course this is taking a temporary back seat until the residency is over.

I have to clean my house too, I hate coming back to a messy house after being gone. I so wish I could say, Go go Gadget house cleaner! Heh

I had to take a break unfortunately as the tail end of the semester kicked my proverbial ass. Because of my wreck in December I ended up way behind, so when you add my schoolwork and slowly working back up to full time at my job, it ended up being a lot. Plus, finishing my first revision was a huge step, so I relaxed LOL. I am going to design a sign graphic that I will hang when I am not posting for a few days so that you know I am not leaving, I am just working on stuff.

So after the revision of the book, I turned my focus to revising some of the stories I haven’t sent out yet. I have several stories that are making the rounds, but I also have a backlog of stories that are very close to finished that just need polishing, as well as some that are good but need a couple of revisions. So I’ve worked on that, and now I have eight stories out. Three that have been out for a while, but I also just sent stories to Glimmer Train, Clean Sheets, Modern Fiction Magazine, Not One of Us, and Vestal Review. Glimmer Train is a long shot I know, but still, I’d love to get published in there. I also have six in the pipeline for not a ton of revision, and then a few more that will take some work.

I’ve also been branching back out into multi-genre work. I love photography, drawing and oil and watercolor painting, but I haven’t done any of for a long time, like a few years. (Well, I have done photography when I traveled.) So I have been missing all of it a lot, and I decided that I need to get back into it. I think that it is important to branch out into different types of artistic works because they enrich and help other branches. (That will be the focus of an upcoming post.) I plan on posting pictures of my artwork as well as my photography here as I talk about how they are connected, and also to help me stick with it along with my writing.

So, back into the posting flow!

While packing laptop and books to read while on trip to daughter’s weekend swim meet was a good idea, in practice you got a lot less done than you thought you would.

Particularity since it took a day longer than planned when your clutch blew out 60+ miles from home.

Self to me: Shut. Up.

I fixed the link in the sidebar that was SUPPOSED to point to my story “Spring and Fall” - apparently I screwed it up when I put it in there the first time.  :???:

or rather, the first real post on this blog that isn’t filled with cussing at the frustration of dealing with CSS and Wordpress

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Val, and I am in the process of growing my writing career. Currently I have had two short stories published, and am in the process of the second revision of one novel and in the middle of writing the second. I have also returned to school to obtain my MFA in creative writing through a low residency program. I chose to study for my MFA not because I think it will “make” me a writer, but because as a writer you are always learning, and I feel that I can learn a lot from studying with my mentors.

Currently I live in a land covered with snow, (which I *ahem* hate) and am mom to my biggest fan, my daughter. I have a weakness for tea, read voraciously, gothic tendencies, and am a geek in more ways than one. All of which makes for some interesting writing. I hope to talk about in here things I have learned and discovered, market research and submission, the progression of my novel as well as novels I read. So welcome, and have a cup of tea!