Author: Scott William Carter

A Web of Black Widows Collection Available for Preorder

Although I certainly didn’t plan it this way, I’m going to have two short story collections published this year.  At this point, I’m not exactly sure which of the two will be available first, but one of them has a cover and is now available for preorder:

webblackcover blackwidow_title In these six provocative tales, Scott William Carter takes the reader on a journey to places where love and loss intersect. A limited edition from the very prestigious small press, PS Publishing. [Learn More]

Pre-Order Today:

PS_Publishing

(Less than 500 copies available!)

Looking over the galleys recently, I was really happy with these stories.  Not only do I think they’re some of my best work, but I think they hang together thematically very well.  The collection contains four new stories and two reprints, and the two reprints only appeared briefly online, which is one of the reasons I wanted to include them in the collection.   You can buy the signed, jacketed hardcover for $40, which when you consider that it’s limited to only 100 copies, is a pretty darn good deal.  Or you can buy the unsigned jacket-less hardcover (which still has Glen Chadbourne’s wonderful cover illustration) for $19.20.

The collection contains the following stories:

“A Web of Black Widows”   . . . A grieving tattoo artist makes a cross-country trip with a pregnant woman on the run from her disturbed husband.

“The Woman Coughed Up By the Sea” . . . A mysterious artist finds a woman washed up on the beach and feels compelled to paint her.

“She’s Not All There” . . . A young man who made a disastrous choice in wife is forced to crash weddings with his ghostly bride so she can remain on Earth.

“Black Lace And Salt Water”  . . . A poet suffering from writer’s block  moves to the Oregon coast and finds inspiration from an unlikely source.

“Static in a Still House” . . . A lonely man who makes his living scouting thrift shops and estate sales finds a mysterious baby monitor that changes his life.

“Front Row Seats” . . . A widowed mathematician suffering from an unusual malady seeks relief in the movie theater — and finds more than he bargained for.

I can’t promise these will be uplifting stories, but I hope you’ll find them both moving and thought provoking.  Think of them as October Valentines.  Though my first novel will be published in a few months, this book actually marks the first time that my work has appeared all on its own, not in anthology or magazine surrounded by other writers.  And if you could show your support by buying a copy, I’d be much obliged.

Random Thought: My Computer Might Be Preventing Me From Becoming a Bestseller (or: Typewriters Have Their Advantages)

You know, there’s days I wish I wrote on a manual typewriter.  Then when I’m frustrated with something I could, with a great flourish, rip the page out of the typewriter, crumple it into a ball and toss it in the fireplace.  Then my wife could dig it out of the fireplace and claim it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, forcing me to mail it to publishers who’d very quickly write me a check with lots of commas in it.  It would be read by millions and then I’d be on Oprah with a great story to tell about The Masterpiece That Very Nearly Met a Fiery Doom.  But computers?  It’s hard to hit the delete key with a flourish.  And of course, there’s also nothing for my wife to rescue from a Fiery Doom.  What is she supposed to do, use Norton Utilities?  What kind of story would that make?  “You see, Oprah, I deleted the file with a great flourish, and then my wife, fearing I might do such a rash thing, used her computer skills to rescue it from my Recycle Bin before I emptied it . . .”

So really, you can see how a computer might be holding me back from being a bestseller.  Technology does have its price, you know.

Winter 2010 Update

As I sit here on New Year’s Day, the kids playing with their cousin on the floor beneath me, my wife baking in the other room, a hot cup of coffee on the end table, a computer on my lap, and the sound of the rain outside as I sit here comfy with my feet up on the recliner — I have to think, you know, this is a pretty darn good life.  Of course, all that baking will mean a pile of dishes to do later, but hey, I really can’t complain.  Well, I could, but I don’t imagine I’d get a lot of sympathy points. 

 As far as writing productivity goes, 2009 was a decent year.  Not a great year, but at least back to where I was when I decided to get serious about being a writer about eight years ago — with two new novels finished, another novel started, and five stories out to editors.  As far as publications go, it was pretty quiet, with just one short story seeing print (“The Bear Who Sang Opera” in Analog), but you know, for the most part the publication process isn’t something I can control. 

 Still, 2010 should be an even bigger year when it comes to productivity, far exceeding any year before it.  I made some changes to my work habits the last third of 2009 — mostly just being much more strict about adhering to regular daily word counts — and it paid off in a big way.  So I’ll be sticking with the daily regimen.  Plus I’m doing a short story a month while I’m doing the novels and that’s helped my productivity too, allowing me to switch from one project to another when I find myself stalling a bit.  More than anything else, I measure my success in terms of productivity, so just plain writing more has been intensley gratifying.

And that’s just the beginning.  I’ve got big plans for the website too.  I’ve done a lot of thinking the last few months about what it means to be a writer in the twenty-first century — especially a fiction writer — and you’ll see a lot of that thinking turned into action around these parts in the near future.  No need to say more for now, but it’s going to be fun.  Work, but fun. 

This year will also see the publication of my first novel, as well as two story collections, so it’s already set to be a banner year. 

I’m not big on posting all of my goals and plans publicly (though I’m actually very big on the whole goal thing pesonally), but I will say that my main focus this year is being smarter with my time.  As productive as I am, I’m often aghast at how much time I fritter away.  Since I want to crank things up a notch this year — in all aspects of my writing — it’s not something I can let myself get away with any more.