Anatomy of Successful Crowdfunding (or, How I made 700% of my Kickstarter goal despite a godawful cover image)
What makes a successful crowdfunding project? Any number of things, I’m sure. That’s the good news. A campaign doesn’t need to be 100% successful on all fronts to make its funding goal, it just needs to do enough things well enough. But a lot rides on certain key choices you make for your campaign. In the spirit of inquiry, I’ve conducted this–is it called a “postmortem” is it’s successful beyond my wildest dreams? -No, a friend reminds me...
Read More“The Void Test” at the Cast of Wonders Podcast!
This weekend, I had one of my first stories in audio publication! You can now listen to “The Void Test,” read by Chloë Yates in the YA Podcast Cast of Wonders. It’s a story of confronting fears, most importantly the sort of fears even ultimate power can’t defeat. The text is included on the website, slightly revised from its originally appearance in MindFlights Magazine in...
Read MoreA Quick, Happy Update
I’m in the midst of packing (I have lost track of how much packing I’ve done this year, between actually moving house to D.C. and the frequent flights to home, Vegas, LA, and Ghana) but have time to fire off some quick notes. First off, packing is a wonderful way to clean house. You really make a decision about an item’s true value if admitting its value means carrying it with you and/or finding a corner of suitcase to stuff it in. I’ve managed to clean through my story...
Read MoreI propose Arkenberg’s Law of Blogging
Arkenberg’s Law of Blogging goes thus: The number of blogworthy items occuring in one’s life exists in inverse proportion to the amount of time one has to blog, resulting in less blogging the more there is to blog about. I suppose this could even deserve the name of Arkenberg’s Paradox of Blogging. Unless someone else has observed it first, in which case I am highly embarassed. So, what’s going on in my life that is blogworthy, but I have no time to blog on it? I have...
Read MoreReward in Daily Science Fiction’s Kickstarter! Also, Newsletters.
Daily Science Fiction is hosting a Kickstarter Campaign to pay authors for their short fiction published for the next six months, September 2013-March 2014. Among rewards including omnibus anthologies, gourmet chocolate, and a crocheted Cthulhu, you can also sign up for a critique from Yours Truly of a short story (they say up to 5,000 words, but I wouldn’t complain about longer, either)! See the details for Daily Science Fiction’s Fall 2013 campaign here. On the topic of...
Read MoreFair Trade Blogger Bragging
As a college sophomore, I first realized I was interested in international advocacy. A great goal but initially hard to accomplish in a small, friendly town smack dab in the middle of the North American continent. Except I was lucky, because I went to school in Waukesha, home of the Plowshare Center–an organization that hosts educational forums on social, economic, and environmental justice issues globally, and also runs Wisconsin’s first Fair Trade store. They welcomed me on...
Read MoreWe didn’t choose the Folklife, the Folklife chose us–and other updates
So I’ll start with the sad news, because the past two weeks have been tough: I got to visit Las Vegas for the first time, but under some of the worst possible circumstances. My uncle living there passed away and I went to attend the funeral and visit with my cousins (and also some immediate family members–we welcomed the chance to offer face-to-face support after certain recent events, which I might add are completely unrelated to this funeral. Troubles never come one at a...
Read MoreUpdate
It seems disingenuous to continue blogging as if life is going well when something horrible has happened. Yet sharing too many details in a public place seems disrepectful of the privacy of those involved, not to mention it forces casual readers to become witnesses to a situation they may prefer not to be involved in. This is a balance I always walk when a certain sort of family crisis recurs. It helps, perhaps, that I am not actually capable of writing about it in a fluent, pleasant, or even...
Read MoreWhat’s GetYeDone been doing lately? Glad you asked!
You might be a writer if your to do-list goes:-talk to X about aprt-Pay credit card balance (!!!)–Aurmid has never had a family or given her daughters one–there is only the Empire. Revisions of One Hundred Days are going very well after this most recent Staycation, and as I’m thinking more about the story I keep encountering new insights. But writer or not, most people have to-do lists, and if you have a to-do list, the odds are it’s near unmanageable. Back in...
Read MoreBlogging from the Writer’s Staycation
After my work with Zahara proved so rewarding last semester, I’ve continued as her assistant over this summer. This means I’ve been able to attend not only one but two Staycations–and this time as an apprentice Fellow, which means this Friday I’ll be an opening and lunchtime speaker. It also means that, with four weekdays dedicated to my own projects, I finally have time to ressurect some of the old draft posts for this blog. So what is the Staycation, exactly?...
Read MoreAbout Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.