Tales of Pending Rejection: Time Traveling

Hey Gang,

Forgot to update this with all of the holiday madness, but I had another acceptance recently. There's a cool little e-zine out there called 50 to 1, they publish 50 word stories and first lines (ostensibly of longer works, basically what they want is something intriguing that makes you wonder what the story is).

I submitted two 50 word stories and two first lines, and they accepted one of the first lines! Whoop!

You can find my entry to the most recent issue here, but check out the other pieces, it's cool what you can do with only a few words.

Tales of Pending Rejection: 4 poems out, 3 picked up & gettin’ Nasty... again

It’s been a good week submission-wise. My poem "The Sun Shines Down" was accepted two days after I had submitted it. You can find it here at the Black Lantern Publishing website (up already, pretty cool).

Buoyed by that success, I decided to head to the files and see which of my older poems deserved a new look (yeah, yeah, I’m supposed to be writing new stuff, and I have a lot of that scheduled for this holiday weekend, but I was eager to send out more). I found nine poems that weren’t cringe-inducing, and for various reasons never found a home the first time around.

I sent out four additional poems to two new markets, Rose & Thorn Journal and The Lesser Flamingo. While I have to wait at least a few weeks on the ones for Rose & Thorn, I heard back within hours on the ones I sent to The Lesser Flamingo (I love that name): both of them accepted! But not until the January issue. I’ll remind you, no worries.

I'm also giving "Nasty in the Cupboard" another run, in the daily journal Everyday Weirdness. It's a pretty cool publication and I'd be happy to be included. We’ll see what happens there.

None of these are paying markets, of course, but I’m good on that for now. Day Job keeps the bills in line and the internet pulsing. I’ve still got five more poems to dole out, and a couple of markets in mind before I start turning out some newer material. Needless to say it has been a good week thus far, made better by the fact that Day Job only lasts three days for the holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Tales of Pending Rejection: Nasty in the Cupboard & The Sun Shines Down

For over two weeks I've left you hanging. You've probably been wondering, nay pining to know where I stand with my weekly story and poem submissions. I know, I'm sorry.

But here's the good news, I've kept up on the submissions. The first story submitted, "The Six Stages of Grief," is still out and awaiting response. I've since threw out and had tossed back a 100 word flash story called "Nasty in the Cupboard" to a flash horror market called MicroHorror. Nasty was an old story written years ago, but I always liked it ad would like to see it published eventually.

That was week two, this past week I wrote a new poem called "The Sun Shines Down" and submitted it to Black Lantern Publishing. This was the first poem I had written in a while, and I'm a little nervous about it, but I like the imagery I got down on the page and am hopeful.

I'm also going to keep a running tally of these tales of pending rejections on the sidebar, updated as I submit and hear back from various markets. [Edit to add: I'm removing the tally, as it's not really a good motivator for me, and an annoyance to update - 01/12/10]

Next up: I have an idea for a superhero short story, and I have a market in mind for it. We'll see if I can pump it out in time and save the day! (sorry)

Story submission

I submitted a flash story I wrote a while back to Every Day Fiction tonight. This was the first time in a long time I tried that. It was actually six 100 word stories that told a larger tale, I just gave it a new title ("The Six Stages of Grief"), did a bit of fancy formatting (not really, just added a few extra words, six of them being "stage"), and there you have it (can you guess what the other six words were?).

I was so happy having done it, I started a story submission tracker spread-sheet thingie on my Google Docs. After I had done that, I realized I didn't really have much else to submit. Certainly nothing recent. I wondered what to do.

That was when the AH-HA! moment happened... write more stories. And a few poems (mostly free form, but maybe a sestina, the format has always fascinated me). But mostly stories.

My new goal is to write one flash story or poem a week, and send it out for however long I can keep it up. I know, it's crazy, especially now with NaNoWriMo going on this month. I can't help it, I'm feeling free and enjoying it, and I want to take advantage while it lasts.

NaNo update tomorrow, bed now.