I finished October Madness early. No, I don't care that early is "cheating".

I don't know what it was this year, all those stories on submission made me super frenetic about how I had all those stories on submission. So I loaded up the submission queue super quick and then crouched over my email like



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But, I soldiered on and got it done!

31 submissions for the 31 days of October! Of those 31 submissions, I have received 11 rejections. I'm not going to give you the form/personal breakdown, but I will tell you....one of those rejections was a one hour rejection,which was a first. I mean, don't get me wrong, the agony of Schrodinger's Submission is real, but one hour? Ouch.



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I also know that submissions are very subjective. There could be a specific issue an editor is building, and an editor's taste and vision is always a factor as well. It isn't necessarily a value judgement. Etc. Etc. It's hard to keep that emotional balance on a day when you get 4 or 5 rejections, though.

But, the fact that I still have 20 submissions from just October is staggering. And 5 more from prior to that, with a grand total of 25 submissions, 24 of them unique submissions (I simultaneously submitted that one story which had its submission birthday. What've I got to lose, right?) That's an awful lot of short stories I think are ready enough to be out there, just waiting for the right editor and market to say yes, and that's something I'm pretty proud of.

October Madness 2016!

Well, we're just past the halfway point on the month  (how did that happen?) and it's a good a time as any to give you a submissions update. I know you're eager to hear all about it!

This year, I got impatient and jumped the gun a bit on some submissions, so to date, since October 1, I've submitted 22 times (as opposed to the more correct 17, but whatever, this is my game, I'll play how I want ^^). I've gotten....almost alarmingly few rejections so far, actually.  4 so far, out of those 22 submissions.

I had a story pass it's submission birthday (365 days and counting!), so I went ahead and simultaneously submitted it elsewhere. 

Some of those stories are ones that I wrote just this year, as a part of my New Year's resolution to produce at least one short story a month. Some of the are stories I've written over the years, that I've edited and rewritten and, I think, made better. This is the obvious of objective, of course; I think my stories are pretty great, or I wouldn't bother.

My rejections so far are from Uncanny, Gamut, Fantasy & SciFi, and The Dark. I've turned around and sent each of those stories someplace else, of course, because that's the way it goes. And it helps me not dwell. At least one of those stories is kind of running out of places to go, but that's when I got both The Lion and the Dragonslayer and Sugar and Spice published, so there's that.

I've started a number of stories this month, and at least one of them is this close to being finished. I've also, I think, decided on my 2016 NaNoWriMo project, which will be a sequel to the cyberpunk novel I wrote in July.

Strange Horizons annual fundraiser!

Strange Horizons is a very, very good online magazine that publishes scifi/fantasy/whatever short stories, poems, columns, and reviews. I've been reading them for years, and been submitting stories to them for years as well. No "yes" from them yet, but I have gotten some very good personal rejections from them as well, not just forms.

They've got 8 days and change left in the fundraiser, and are at about $7500 out of their baseline $15,000 goal. It would be really great to see them reach it! They've got some great things they want to do, like publish stories in translation, do interactive stories, that kind of thing.

If you haven't checked them out, go. Do so. Here are some things I've really liked recently that they've published:

Million-Year Elegies: Oviraptor, by Ada Hoffman

The Beef, by J.D. Moyer

Noise Pollution, by Alison Wilgus

little stomach, by Charlotte Geater


You can donate to them via Network for Good, PayPal, subscribe to them via Patreon, or even send in a physical payment.  Strange Horizons is a 501 (c) (3) not for profit organization and so in the United States, donations are tax deductible.

September 2016 Goals Roundup

Well. September seemed like a reallllly long month to me. You?

Lots of writing in September. A lot of it was Shadowrun writing (not the same character as in "A Shadowrun Story" which, improbably, has become one of the most popular posts on this blog, but a character with similar elements. She's also a decker, for one. It goes from there), and some of it was workshop writing, as my writing workshop has begun again. Workshop writing is not always complete, though I do have one flash piece to show for it, and what we did today (which is October 1, and will not count for my September goals, mais oui).