Dale Cozort's Alternate History Newsletter - Feb 2011

Dale Cozort's Alternate History Newsletter

  February 2011

  By: Dale Cozort

  Copyright 2011 Dale Cozort

  Dale Cozort’s

  Alternate History Newsletter

  Volume 14: Number 1 --- February 2011

  What Is This?

  For the last fourteen years I’ve participated in an alternate history APA (Amateur Press Association) called Point of Divergence (POD). POD is a cross between a snail-mail forum and a writers’ workshop for people who are seriously into alternate history. We share stories, ideas, facts and reviews on alternate history. This is a subset (about 50%) of the zine I did for POD in February 2011. I stripped out most of the fiction, but there are a few snippets and excerpts of fiction in here. This is one of several dozen alternate history newsletters that I’ll eventually make available in e-book formats, so if you like this one, watch for more. All of the material in this is of course copyrighted.

  Who Am I?

  So What Have I Been Up To?

  Not as much to report this issue as there was last issue. I’ve still been spending an inordinate amount of time promoting Exchange. Other than that, I’ve spent most of my writing time editing All Timelines Lead To Rome. It’s much improved, and almost ready for publication in my opinion. I entered it in the Amazon contest (ABNA) for 2011. ABNA is a cattle call, with 5000 entries in General Fiction and up to 5000 in young adult. Most of the entries get cut quickly, with the number in each category dropping to 1000 on the first cut, based only a pitch, then to 250 based on average scores from two Amazon vine reviewers.

  The overwhelmingly likely outcome of entry is getting cut in the first two rounds. All but about 5% of the entries do. I got knocked out first round last time with All Timelines, which was probably merciful because it was nowhere close to ready. This time I made it through the first cut. The next one will be in late March.

  Early last year, Kurt Sidaway did a very thorough and helpful job of serving as another pair of eyes on All Timelines. I was busy with other projects and didn’t get back to look over his edits until late January of this year. I finally did get to them just before I submitted the manuscript to ABNA, and they were very helpful. I didn’t quite get to all of them before they closed ABNA, but I think I got most of the plot holes he pointed to plugged. Very much appreciated. Thanks Kurt.

  I’m still setting ambitious goals for myself. My goal for the next month is to get Snapshot both completed and ready for publication by March 11. There is a reason for that deadline. I’m attending a writing conference featuring one of the better known literary agents that weekend. I don’t know if I would have a chance to pitch it in person, but if the opportunity arises I would like to be ready.

  Of the novels I could get ready by then, I think Snapshot has the most breakout potential, though I have an enormous amount to do to get it ready for publication.

  Last minute note: As of right before I printed this off, I finished nearly all the edits for Snapshot. I still have to blend in a rewritten beginning and wind it up, hopefully in around 5000 words.

  With all of the emphasis on novel-writing, I’m afraid I haven’t done a lot with alternate history scenarios this time around. The bulk of this issue will be excerpts from Snapshot and There Will Always Be An England.

  A Perspective: I’ve been writing fiction since middle school. I got serious about it and started finishing a substantial proportion of the stories I started about fifteen years ago. Raymond Chandler used to claim that a writer had to get a million words of crap out of their system before they got to the good stuff. I recently did an incomplete survey of what I’ve written so far, and come up with 757,302 words of fiction written as of today. That doesn’t count rewrites or words written and then cut. If I included words written, and then edited out I’m probably very close to the million words. Here is a summary of my fiction writing so far:

  Novels:

  4 written

  4 more than half written

  6 fragments (All but one from very early)

  Shorter fiction

  19 finished

  24 unfinished

  Most of the fragments and unfinished stories are from my early years of writing, though I still start an occasional short story that bogs down. I hope to finish three out of the four unfinished novels and at least a couple of the novel fragments.