Welcome to 2020!

Happy New Year! I hope you had a safe and happy holiday, and that you have a good and prosperous year ahead of you!

2019 was a pretty darn good publishing year for me. I tweeted about it, but I'm happy to recount here!

I submitted stories 162 times and received 11 acceptances! 11!!!

109 of my rejections were forms, 39 were personals, and I still have 18 stories pending.

I had 4 original short stories printed: "For Whatever We Lose", "The Pearls That Were His Eyes", "Fundamentals of Search and Rescue", and "One Hundred Years".

In addition, 2019 was certainly the Year of the Reprint!

"Sugar and Spice" and "Daddy's Girl" were both reprinted in audio format. "The Wave", from my Patreon, was reprinted in actual print.

I wrote 4 short stories, and started far more (at least a few of which are pushing the boundary of what 'short story' means and are edging more into novella and novelette territory, which is great, because there are so many places to send those pieces [Narrator: there are not.]) I wrote 1 novella, Run With the Hunted 2: Ctrl Alt Delete. I wrote 1 novel, which I will be querying, after people read it, I polish it, more people read it, and I polish it more.  Oh and after I write a query letter and a synopsis.

I feel like when I was querying The Last Song, far fewer agents wanted a synopsis up front. I don't know if this is because many agents are using Querymanager now, or if in general it's just a better strategy for them. and I knew I'd have to write a synopsis, I just didn't think it'd be immediately.

Publication! "For Whatever We Lose" in Luna Station Quarterly

Hello friends and readers, my second publication for the year has come out! (if you missed it, my first one was a podcast reprint of "Sugar and Spice")

"For Whatever We Lose" is a scifi short story that you can read now in Luna Station Quarterly. They also have a print edition, which is very nice. There will be an interview about it on their blog later this month so I don't want to retread too much of that ground accidentally, but I do want to say that the title comes from the ee cummings poem "maggie and milly and molly and may" and I'm honestly not sure if I should recommend reading the poem before or after reading my story, but that one informs the other just a little bit. It's one of the few times I haven't had a hard time coming up with a title.

If you liked my story "Daddy's Girl", it's a little bit along those lines.

Also, in upcoming publication news, my short story "The Wave" will be in issue 04 of Wizards in Space Magazine. You can preorder a print copy of it here, and I think it's coming out on March 22. "The Wave" previously appeared on my Patreon, so I was very happy to find it a home with a wider audience here!

Reprint Publication: Sugar and Spice

Hello friends!

When it appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of The Sockdolager, "Sugar and Spice" was the third thing I'd ever had accepted ever. Charles Payseur reviewed that issue on Quick Sip Reviews, and said quite nice and astute things about my story.

Well, The Sockdolager is sadly now closed, but fear not! You can now hear a new narration of "Sugar and Spice" on The Overcast! It is read by J.S. Arquin, who does a lovely job, and includes an afterword that I wrote at his request. He's got some interesting thoughts on the story which I will not say are right or wrong. Maybe give it a listen yourself, and decide.

"Sugar and Spice" is about witches and being neighborly (or not), and contains one dog who is not harmed in any way. It is the first "witchy" story I wrote, and in the same world as "Be Careful What You Wish For", which appeared on my Patreon, and in the HML Writers Volume 1 anthology. There are other completed stories in this world, and hopefully they'll be in the wild one of these days!

Happy listening!

Yes hello it is February (2019)

I guess I should have blogged last month but I didn't and here we are.

January was kind of a frigid blur and I didn't have anything come out anyway (other than Patreon stories. Hey, subscribe to my Patreon! $1 a month gets you at least one short story)

I DID have something else come out in December, though. I edited an anthology for my writing group, which you can get in paperback or in ebook on Amazon.

I've continued to work on Run With the Hunted 2: Electric Boogaloo (Run With the Hunted available on Amazon and Elsewhere, tell your friends! Rate on Amazon and Goodreads! I'm not one of those authors who reads my reviews and responds to them. I just read them. I need them.)

So far, for 2019, I have had four acceptances! That is already exactly as many as I had for 2018 so let's hope we're just going upwards from here!

Three of them haven't been announced yet, but I can tell you that my scifi short story "For Whatever We Lose" will be in Luna Station Quarterly on March 1! Mark your calendar, tell your friends, set up your Google alert. It's of the same, shall we say "tone", as "Daddy's Girl" (which was in the Summer 2017 issue of Syntax & Salt if you missed it).

 I may have more announcements for you later this month! Keep reading, stay warm.

Writing in January (lots of deadlines!)

It's February already (or finally, depending on how your January went!)

My short story "A Thing With Feathers" is live on Mythic Delirium's website! You can also get the entire issue on Amazon or Weightless Books if that's more your style (no physical magazine, alas).

I finished three stories in January. One of them was something I'd started last year and messed around with a lot, trying to figure out point of view (first? close third? omniscient?) and tense (past? present?) and finally I was able to bring it home. The other two I wrote for submission calls, and have already been rejected for those anthologies. On one hand, that's a letdown. On the other hand, I really like it when responses are prompt. It means I'm not waiting for months. It means I can send another story. Or write another story, depending on how specific what they want is (Sword & Sonnet is pretty specific).

I also got an acceptance in January! They'd held the story for awhile, and also kindly let me send an updated version of it (of course I figured out a better way to end it after submission) and I'm very excited to announce this one when I'm able! I think projected publication date is April, so stay tuned, space cowboys.



Some recommended listening when you read "A Thing With Feathers" (I wrote the story before I ever heard this song or heard of Meg Myers, but it's a good fit!)

July 2017 goals roundup and Another Story Acceptance!

First thing's first: I got another story acceptance!  My short story "A Thing With Feathers" will be published in Mythic Delirum. I don't know when/what issue yet, so I'll keep you posted, but (obviously) I am super excited about this. A lot of amazing writers have been in their pages, including their most recent issue, which features JANE YOLEN, Mari Ness, Sandra Odell, Jennifer Crow (and many more).

I still have 14 other stories on submission (Well, 13, one is simultaneously submitted) and getting an acceptance has of course given me renewed hopes for those. Though I've said this before on Twitter (and maybe here too, I can't remember), I have to assume each time I send a story out that the answer will be yes. Otherwise, I would get far too discouraged and not send any out at all. So that's 14 potential "yeses" (well 13, as flattering as it would be to have two markets fight over one of my stories I think it would be very bad form on my part). I don't even know what I'd do if everything came back 'yes'. Fly apart with joy, I guess? With how many submissions I've sent out this year, and how I've been perpetually submitting in such volume, I probably won't separately do a month of "submit a story every day" in October as I have for the past couple of years. Part of the goal of that was to consistently be getting my stories into slush piles, and especially this year, I haven't slacked off on that.

But July, July was an interesting writing month. I rewrote not one but two short stories in July. And yes, I did in fact finish editing down The Last Song, fulfilling my CampNaNoWriMo goal. Now I need to write it back up again! And THEN I can query with it anew.

June 2017 Goals roundup

So June was pretty great!

My short story "Daddy's Girl" was published in Syntax & Salt and a lot of people have shared it across Twitter and said very nice things about it, which I really appreciate and which thrills me to no end. I try to share short stories when I've really liked them, and follow the authors on Twitter, and in this instance that story is mine and that author is me and it's a lovely feeling. Additionally, the Syntax & Salt folks were very nice and easy to work with, and I'd like the stories they'd run previously, which is why I submitted mine.

Oh, so have you tried out Inspirobot? You should. It's an AI built to generate inspirational phrases, and slaps them onto images. It's....interesting. Sometimes perfect, sometimes hilarious. Sometimes both! I may inflict some of them on my writing group as writing prompts. We'll see.

Interestingly, so far, every story I have had accepted was either 1. accepted its first time submitted or 2. the first time I'd submitted a piece to that particular market. Obviously, this trend has to break at some point, as I have more stories and am constantly sending them out. Though I guess I need to take a break on that pretty soon, if I'm going to be doing October Madness again this year. Though the point of October Madness is to get myself submitting stories, without having lapses, and clearly that is no longer a problem for me. So we'll see.

There are any number of short stories I have (still, forever and always) that I have started and that need to be finished. Some which have been rejected enough that they've received large overhauls and rewrites, some slated to receive such a treatment. I've got one story that was not originally speculative but is now and (I think) works pretty well that way. We'll see what the rejection letters (or acceptance letters?) have to say about that.

In June I indeed wrote a new short story, a cyberpunk-ish sort of thing concerning biotech and limb/body part replacement and personal security. It was also a romance, very technically, and written to a prompt from my friend Tori (the author of Eelgrass), who was trying to prevent me from jumping the gun and submitting May's short story too early. Because I don't really write romance, it was an interesting challenge, and she gave me these stipulations: "1 kiss, one loving description of a butt, flowers exchanged, and a meet cure. I also want one witty banter, a shooting range, and an assassination attempt."  It is to my credit that I did not in fact just cheat and write a Shadowrun story using one of my characters. I did also write a couple of Shadowrun stories, a pair of which were very fun indeed because they were the same scene/situation from two perspectives.

I have decided for July's Camp NaNoWriMo that I'll be rewriting/revising The Last Song. I've made a new and improved playlist, I have the most current draft printed out, I've been circling the characters in my head and looking at Detroit things again. I've also had the thought that maybe I shouldn't write it from the perspective of my rock star Orpheus, but I think writing it from my modern day Eurydice's point of view isn't actually the best plan. It's possible, certainly, and though she needs to be represented far more strongly than my current text does, I don't think that's the correct frame. So we'll see what happens.

PUBLICATION DAY: "Daddy's Girl" is LIVE at Syntax & Salt

Greetings readers!

My latest published short story, "Daddy's Girl" has gone live at Syntax & Salt.

It is near(ish) future science fiction, and the tag line (lead line? Or is it lede? I'm all publication0-joy-frenzy over here, excuse me) is "Nobody needs to read drone instructions anyway: they always worked right out of the box."

It's a story I worked on carefully; the title has gone through several iterations, though the story itself has remained largely the same as the first draftings.

Go! Read and enjoy!

Story acceptance! (and May 2017 Goals Roundup)

Happy June!

May seemed to take forever. It was an interminable month. Like, it has always been May and it will be May for the rest of our lives. But, that has passed, and it's starting to be warmer more consistently. Oh yeah and we keep getting freak thunderstorms with hail.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But! I had a story accepted! It will be in the Summer issue of Syntax & Salt , which will go live June 21. Don't worry, I'll remind you.

So in May (you know where this is going) I wrote the first draft of a short story. It's both a mess and not a a mess, a complete story and not a complete story. I may need to shuffle the paragraphs like a deck of cards. I may need to tease apart some of the paragraphs, expanding them into precisely what I meant to say in the first place. I may need to chop words, sentences. I definitely need a title. So really, the normal state of things when I've finished a first draft.

I also began to rewrite a story I'd written back in college. It was a surprisingly large short story, 7500 words, and by "rewrite" I mean "I read the old one again to inform this new story that I'm writing from scratch" rather than "I'm keeping some words/phrases/paragraphs as I shift things around and make this fresh and better than I could have made it 13 years ago" (holy shit did I graduate college 13 years ago?). Arguably, 7500 words is a lot to abandon. But, considering I intend to rewrite my very very first NaNoWriMo novel as a short story (maybe novella? novelette?), in the face of that it's just a warmup act. Stretches.

And speaking of NaNoWriMo, July will again be Camp NaNoWriMo. Theoretically, I should devote at least some of June to thinking about what I'll do. Book 3 of the werewolf trilogy? Revising and rewriting The Last Song? Something entirely new? We shall see.

June 2016 goals roundup

First off, if interested, you can read the story I mentioned in my May roundup in the summer issue of The Sockdolager! My story is entitled "Sugar and Spice" which, by the way, is a title I'm happy with for once. The rest of the issue is good too, so I do invite you to peruse. It was a pleasure working with the Sockdolager folks, and it's a pleasure to be in that issue. If reading online isn't your thing, you can purchase a physical copy of the issue here for $7.

In May, I got no story acceptances, but did receive several helpful rejections. I discovered that the New Yorker's form rejection is very nice and mild (or I got the nice and mild one). I have 11 stories on submission right now; it should be 12, just have to send that other one off somewhere. It's funny, for me, the "odd stories out" are the ones with no speculative elements. They still have their oddness, though, which I think makes them difficult to place.

In May, I didn't write a new short story from scratch. See, Tor.com briefly opened a submission window for novellas, so I edited and revised an older novella I'd written. And, because the minimum required word count was 20,000 and I was at 17,000, I added about 3,000 words to the story. That's about short story length, and I feel it strengthened and updated the overall work, so I'm going to count it, for the purposes of my "write a story every month" goal. I did a bunch of writing that I'm happy with . Good enough! Really, this novella is something I've consistently been happy with and, as always, I very much hope the answer is yes.

Though that's kind of my approach to submissions in general. I always hope the answer is yes. I submit to markets I'd be happy to see my stories in. I aim high for my submissions, and I keep trying.

Keep trying!

May 2016 goals roundup (And another acceptance!)

I'm very happy to say, I've had another story acceptance! My short story, currently titled "Sugar and Spice", will be in the Summer 2016 issue of Sockdolager magazine. This is my second story acceptance this year, and I don't think it will ever stop being thrilling.

I got a couple of very nice personalized rejections for my short stories this month. One of them has prompted me to get a few more sets of eyes on that particular story, and I'm chewing on the comments now. The other personal rejection was more "we really really liked this story, it just didn't fit with our magazine, please keep us in mind for something else." And while yes, that still means "no", it's the best possible "no" one can receive.

I wrote one short story in May, keeping me on track with my New Year's resolution. That makes 8 stories written this year. I don't intend to stop at 12, if I reach 12 before the end of December; even if I double up in a month, I still want to write new words every month. And it's nice to see my "packet" of stories grow. Some of the stories I've submitted, and still submit, were originally written in college. Regardless of their current states, as they've been edited and rewritten and what have you, I've put in a lot more writing time since college, and do think (hope?) that my writing, and sense of story, has improved since then. Hence, the need for new words, not just retreading old ground.

I do need to consider what I want to write in July, for Camp NaNoWriMo. My library writing workshop has June off, and will return in July for "camp". I don't hold them to writing a book, not least because everybody's goal is not to write a book, but I think some manner of goal setting dimension should come into play for July specifically (suggestions welcome).

Mosaics 2 now available!

I announced my acceptance into Mosaics 2: a Collection of Independent Women back in February, and the time has finally come. It's here, it's here!

The Kindle date still appears to be May 1, but if you want to order the paperback, you could have it by Wednesday! Isn't it lovely, sometimes, to be living in The World of Tomorrow?

My included story is "The Lion and the Dragonslayer": when the village of Orford asked for help with a dragon, they didn't expect the king to send a woman, no matter how big her sword is.

(I was particularly pleased with my little story blurb there; I typically struggle quite a lot with producing an interesting summary of literally anything, much less what I've written.)

In conjunction with this publication, I've created a Goodreads author profile . I hope to see titles of other anthologies, and my own books, attached to it pretty soon!

Obviously, I encourage you to get the Kindle or paperback of Mosaics 2 (or get it from your local library! And request that your library orders it; mine is, as volume 1, anyway, was available through the book distributor Ingram) and I also encourage (entreat?) you to review it on Goodreads and/or Amazon. Every time you review a book, an author gets its wings. Or something.

My second acceptance! Mosaics 2 (A Collection of Independent Women)

Well, ladies and gents, I've gotten my second story acceptance!

My fantasy short story, "The Lion and the Dragonslayer", will be in Mosaics 2 (A Collection of Independent Women), released by DayDreams Dandelions Press. You can preorder it for Kindle here, and I'll update this post when the paper edition preorder is live as well.

Volume 1 is being released on March 8 (Kindle preorder here), which is International Women's Day. Proceeds not going to contributors and costs will be donated to the Pixel Project, which is a charity to end violence against women.

Both collections are fiction, non fiction, and poetry and contain (I think?) 10 contributors. They plan on doing a Volume 3 with stories, essays, etc. from allies, if volumes 1 and 2 break even.

If you'd like to help spread the word regarding the anthologies, they've set up a project on this thing called Thunderclap, which you can use to authorize your social media account (Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr) to post about once, on March 8.

Edited to add:  You can now order a paperback Mosaics: A Collection of Independent Women from Amazon. for $12.99. It's got one review already, hopefully more come rolling in!

Keep writing stories, and keep sending them out

I learned today that Tor.com has two different form rejections, one a little less form than the other, and that's the one I got today.

Along with the regrets that the short story they read wasn't quite what they were looking for, and luck sending it elsewhere, it includes the line "Please send us more of your work in the future."

I read an interesting article not long ago about the gender split of story submission behavior. It claimed that men, when they receive an encouragement like that, try to follow up as soon as possible (some markets want a gap between your submissions, as a for instance, a week, a month, etc.) and women will sometimes wait up to 6 months, if they submit to that market again at all.

I'm not sure how true it is. I'm not saying it isn't true either. I honestly don't know.

There are a lot of women writers getting published out there. The women who are successful, or becoming successful, could not possibly have been such shrinking violets when it came to submitting their stories. They had to have kept trying, kept sending them out (or been so goddamn brilliant they got published the first time out. I'm sure that happens to some people as well).

And then there's this blog post on The Missouri Review about perseverance (Okay, "stubborn" might get bandied about a bit). I feel like writers who are successful even a little, they persevere. They get the rejection and go "Okay, where can I send this next". Or, "What changes do I need to make so that this becomes a better story?"  I try to do both of these. I've been submitting stories for ten years or so by now and have had one acceptance. It isn't like I'm going to stop writing, so I need to keep being stubborn.

Onwards and upwards, my friends.

October Submissions: the final report

You remember my October Submissions. Submitting a story every day in October, blah blah. I finally got my last response, so can finally give the full picture on how things turned out for me. I know you're excited.

My First Publication! "Adventuring", in Daily Science Fiction

I put off telling you guys about my acceptance, because I've been burned before.

But, it's really happening! Happened, rather. My fantasy flash fiction story, "Adventuring", is today's Daily Science Fiction story. Go read it. It'll be quick!

Daily Science Fiction, if you did not know, publishes scifi and fantasy every weekday. You can get the daily free story right in your email (as I do) or visit their site each day. My understanding is they have a monthly digest available for Kindle. A lot of people, when they read the story, do comment about it on their Facebook page. You can also follow them on Twitter. Daily Science Fiction is a Science Fiction Writers of America qualifying market.

"Adventuring" was one of my October submissions. I sent it in on October 29, and got the acceptance on December 7! Its inspiration came from a couple of places...playing Dungeons and Dragons, of course(5th edition is pretty fun so far, by the way). A Chuck Wendig prompt, I think, but I can't remember what one and did not, of course, record that bit of information.