Universe of Possibilities

Sparks Anthology has a Cover

2012-01-08T14:00:00.001-08:00

I even get some billing there, and not last! Don't know how they came up with the order. Getting billed as one of the brightest stars won't go to my head at all.

Isabelle Sold

2011-12-14T06:37:00.001-08:00

...to Earthbound’s Sparks Anthology, the 18th market that considered it. Originally, it was an entry in an evil dolls contest, brought to my attention by Jodi MacArthur. It got rewritten after the 5th market, which was Residential Aliens, whose editor had some helpful suggestions. Members of the Ultimate SF Workshop also helped through their critiques. The story grew from flash to 2600 words as a result.
What fills the love lost when parents get caught up in their jobs, whether through fear of unemployment or addiction to all the things paychecks buy?

Lobsamen Sold

2011-12-12T13:05:00.001-08:00

To Golden Visions webzine. Silly little flash, I know. Memories of Stonington, ME had something to do with it. If you think the dialect is over the top, you haven't been there. The setting was inspired by this little restaurant. I'll link to it when it's up.

North of Provincetown Sold

2011-08-07T12:48:00.001-07:00

The Setting:

After the oil dries up, goods will get about in these along the coasts. Not everyone is going to be able to eat, unless they vary their diet. Can't support this population on a small fraction of the energy we have now. So, what will happen? Tried to make those who made do with the situation at hand sympathetic.

After 3 years and its tenth market it went to the Post-Apocalyptic Raids Anthology, possibly because it is about a post apocalyptic raid. Just had to wait for the right market.

Claire's Touch Sold

2011-07-01T13:03:00.001-07:00

Will be in issue 21 I presume. My first semi-pro. Movin' on up. Neo Opsis has won two Aurora awards, which are Canadian Hugos/Nebulas.

Claire's Touch was on its 15th market, the acceptance came 13 months after the submission. It is a bit daring in some ways, but I didn't take no for an answer, obviously.

What's it about? The first expedition to Mars has a surprise guest. A completely ordinary woman.

Sales, Plural

2011-03-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

So, time to reorder, no?

This shop sold both a Terminal Earth Anthology and a 52 Stitches. How 'bout that! I had donated them. The co-owner approached me at the supermarket and told me the good news. From little acorns grow...

Terminal Earth is #1

2011-02-23T23:02:00.001-08:00

Isn't it nice that the comments say there were no duds. I mean, wouldn't it be terrible to be the only weak story?

Hooray!

Something felt like Sky

2011-02-01T11:50:00.001-08:00

Is up. Lyn set it beautifully with this illustration:

Utterly appropriate, but then you have to read it. Gentle story, Christian fantasy. Man, I have to get cracking. I'm getting published faster than I'm writing. That can't go on.

Necrotic Tissue Issue 13

2011-01-29T10:32:00.000-08:00

Got my copy today and it is gorgeous. The layout is the best of any magazine I've been in. They use pull quotes. You know, the short excerpts in large type within the columns that draw a casual skimming reader in to read the whole story. Some of the full-justified column spacing is too irregular, but other than that, very, very professional. I'm more than pleased. Yes, and the story's there: Irrepressible.

2011-01-26T06:56:00.000-08:00

Hokay, Irrepressible is in this issue, if Scott McCoy, editor, is to be believed.

They do like a little erotic imagery with their horror, no?

Haven't gotten paid, though it just came out. Ordered a copy retail. I'll check to be sure. It's on Amazon as well as their site, issue 13. How lucky.

52 Stitches is a book!

2010-12-23T05:41:00.000-08:00

Go see!
Be warned. Judge this book by its cover.

Maid Marion is up.

2010-12-12T00:05:00.000-08:00

For a week. Quick read. Click here.

Smashwords has Terminal Earth Up

2010-12-02T16:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/31930

Like the cover. Really want to see it on Amazon.

Terminal Earth

2010-12-01T03:52:00.001-08:00

The editors are making progress. I'm in there, with 20 some odd (most odd) authors. It will come out as an ebook 12/10, on Smashwords, Amazon, others. It will be a paperback next year. Further evidence the future of small press will be virtual. What I'd like to see is the cover!

MasterMind

2010-11-24T04:46:00.000-08:00

Got my copy of Nova SciFi with my story and the biggest check for a story yet! Non-writers would laugh at the amount so I'll convert to Biblical sheckels, about three and a half. Their website has been down for a while, so maybe they're in trouble. Pay your bills, Wesley! I better cash that check while it's still good.

Leafed through the adventures of Janet, who went up against mind control aliens with nothing but pluck and her inner strength gained from years shut away in mental institutions. Editor made so many edits, some to make the language simpler, some more what he thought the meaning was, not mine. Ah well, he bought it, he can do what he wants.

Everyone else takes my stuff and does practically nothing to it. I guess the ideal for me would be small changes, done mutually and interactively.

It is nice to see my words in print on paper though. When a story is just on a website it still doesn't feel as real to me.

Three years, 10 stories published, and starting to get slightly into semi-pro publications. Happy with progress.

52 Stitches

2010-11-13T04:21:00.000-08:00

Got my first galley proof. It's for a flash piece going in 52 Stitches. Aaron has a unique arrangement. He publishes a new horror flash each week on his site, then at the end of the year, compiles them in a trade paperback. I think this is his second year, this was his first one. Mine isn't on the site until 12/13.

Something Felt like Sky

2010-10-19T23:36:00.000-07:00

Something Felt like Sky has sold. Yes, minor market but a very nice one. The editor was the first to give me a personal reject, an uncommon courtesy. His criticisms made me a better writer.

This time when I submitted to Residential Aliens, the editor responded within hours. He said: "I like it, but still can't figure the cloven hoof."

I replied "Tradition says the devil has cloven hooves, like a goat. It might come from Mosaic law where such meat is forbidden. Or, it may have been to discredit belief in satyrs. The whole story came to me when I really did see that kind of print in the snow and could not imagine how, what kind of shoe could make such a print."

I'll let you know when it's published.

Irrepressible has Sold

2010-08-15T17:27:00.000-07:00

Necrotic Tissue took it. They had said that it was in second round. A good win, since duotrope says they take 6% and are technically semi-pro though barely.
First color cover mag! Out in January, 2011.
Irrepressible is The Great Divorce turned on its head. Instead of the damned having holidays, the saved do. Another inspiration was the Sarah that burst on the national scene September 3rd, 2008. Resemblance to any person living or dead is of course, purely coincidental. Sarah is a quite common name. Like Pilgrim's Progress Irrepressible has its own Slough of Despond, and it nearly claims a victim.
Ah, well, the more conventional of my Christian friends may take offense, but it was in good fun. Of course, how many of those would read Necrotic Tissue?

Table of Contents out for Terminal Earth

2010-07-31T07:10:00.000-07:00

http://poundlitpress.weebly.com/index.html

They list mine first. Don't know why. I bet it's more optimistic than most, probably best at the end. It wasn't selected first. Neil John Buchanan blogged about his acceptance before I heard, and there were stats on the page of even earlier acceptances. Not alphabetical by name or story. Twenty three? Their standards were 3 to 6 thousand and if you take 4,500 as an average, that's just over 100,000 words. One's a poem, so maybe I'm off. Still, it's going to be one fat anthology.

The Cooling Sun Sold

2010-06-30T15:17:00.000-07:00

The Cooling Sun sold to Terminal Earth anthology. Second anthology sale, and this time a 6k story, not a flash. The idea came to me when I learned that for the last couple of years, the sun's output has been a bit off, so the general warming trend has been momentarily stopped. So, in the story the sun's output drops so that Venus will get about as much light as we do now.

Another experience that was grist. Last time to Ukraine, We tried to save money by going Aerosvit, rather than Austrian Air. They listed modern Boeing aircraft, so we tried. Big mistake. Out there on the tarmac in Kiev was a surprise. A Yakolev with one engine making a grinding racket, not like a modern jet at all. We took the bus there, and got on. The overhead bins didn't have doors, anything could have flown around, hit people. The noise? In the story and in reality, like dinosaur sized bees.

On the way back Odessa was fogged in so we couldn't leave and they wouldn't transfer us to another airline, so we have two more days in Odessa before we could go. It was their only flight. It went one way one day, and the other day back. Last time on that airline. Great material for fiction, though.

So, I'm told it will come out toward the end of the year. In print!

A bit of recognition

2010-06-29T11:54:00.000-07:00

Just a lil bit. Fictiondaily.org found Mandala, I know not how. The teaser they used to entice people to the site was:

"For all I knew, she was a bug-eyed wallaby with a taste for gallium arsenide: the stuff my brains are made of."

It comes early, but really, is that the best sentence in it? Authors are supposed to be bad judges of their work, so I'm not going to question that judgment. I can wonder, though...

In the nine thousand words of the story, they chose those 23? Just asking. Not: "She blinked, and I mourned for them in the moment they were hidden." Not, "It was never the eunuchs who led in battle, monks who won the West, or placid women who strode across the rockseas of Cleopatra's World." not, "Sky of ink, falling tiny round laces of snow, and in the center of it all, us together, the still point on the spinning world, in the twirling galaxy."
Who am I to say?

Master Mind has sold

2010-06-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Master Mind will have a place in Nova SciFi, probably in the Fall issue I'm told. David Gerrold is still stuck, as far as I know, in his War Against the Chtorr series because he tried for first person psychotic. It has been 17 years. Lotsa promises. All hat no cattle. I attempted a hallucinating protagonist, shelved it for a year, and rewrote in cold third, strong narrator. Only way not to daze the reader. You can only ask so much.

It came out of a rather anti-idyllic start to my college sophomore year, in the Mesozoic, when the best editing tool available was corasable paper, plumbers did more than fix pipes, and women traded secrets about better back alleys. One sophomore drank himself to death and was discovered by the smell. Another lost her battle for normalcy, succumbing to schizophrenia.

I imagined her life after dropping out and wondered if her disease might, under the right circumstances, be beneficial. What if her past were wiped out in an EMP, she walked out of the institution where she had been committed, and tried to help with the war effort? And the attackers were mind control aliens?

Redirects

2010-05-23T09:29:00.000-07:00

Ray Gun Revival is going to be revived, hopefully.
There is a change of status.
Read more about it here.

So, two of my stories will live on only on the scribd site. The RGR website will go down soon. The affected stories are:

The Third Shadoc War
and
Bff.jov

Click to read them on scibd. I must not have progressed too much, because I still think they're fun. Not embarrassed by them yet.

Mandala is Up

2010-05-21T15:09:00.000-07:00

Follow the Link:
Mandala
Enjoy
Scott

Mandala sold

2010-03-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

A Fly in Amber

VERY happy about this one. First Novelette. I really love this story, as immodest as that sounds. Sometimes characters become so alive that it doesn't really seem that you own them any more. The bird flies from the nest where it will. Is it a first contact story, a love story, a road story? Echoes of the Odyssey, Jungian psychology and of Niven's World out of Time. If you've never been on a New England winter sleighride, sung Palestrina, or walked a labyrinth, you can. Out in May. Link when I get it.

Maid Marion sold

2009-12-29T08:20:00.000-08:00

First flash sale. First sale at semi-pro rates (due to brevity, not big bucks). 52 stitches
http://52stitches.blogspot.com/
First flash pub. First horror pub.
I'll post a link when it's up.

Fourth Story Published: Eleven to Seven

2009-07-10T10:34:00.000-07:00

Joy.
Eleven to Seven is published.
http://www.sonar4mag.com/
Summer 2009 issue.

2009-07-02T12:13:00.001-07:00

Sonar 4 Mag is closing. The July issue will be the next to last. It is a print/download mag that you have to pay for, so kein wunder.

Fortunately, Eleven to Seven is in the Summer issue, soon to be released, and certain to be a collector's item.
Har.

Bff.jov is up

2009-06-27T23:48:00.000-07:00

Join the fun at:
http://www.raygunrevival.com/Published/RGR_0053_2009.pdf
and thanks to Alice at RGR who pointing out how life imitates art, if you can call the story art:
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/06/17/iowa-teen-wins-text-messaging-championship/

This was probably composting in my brain, leading to the story.

Bff.jov

2009-03-15T15:20:00.000-07:00

The story will be appearing in an upcoming issue of Ray Gun Revival. It is a spoof on a war of the worlds theme. It is best read as a mad libs where I wrote in the words pinochle, meringue, vinyl, quartz, vial, livid, shotgun, mendacious, and clambake. Link to come when I know.

My Name in Lights

2008-12-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

The Third Shadoc War is up on Ray Gun Revival.
Link:
http://www.raygunrevival.com/Published/RGR_0048_2008_11.pdf
Enjoy

Eleven to Seven

2008-09-29T09:08:00.001-07:00

Sold to Sonar 4 ezine. Eleven to Seven is a seafaring story with a twist. The protagonist, Rupert Denton, was named in honor of an ancestor of mine who died at sea. The ship had an epidemic. He was trying to earn money for his family during the Great Depression. So, I honor him. I know little of him beyond that, so the character and the rest of the story are adventitious, and I hope entertaining. Appearing July 2009. Stay tuned for the link!

Humble Beginnings

2008-08-28T12:54:00.000-07:00

This blogspot is topical. Mostly I wanted to create a place for news about where my stories are published.

In time I hope to chronicle the growth of my writing. The beginning of this blog is not the start of me writing. No publications are up yet, on the web or on paper. But two have been accepted.

The two are:

The Third Shadoc War, coming to Ray Gun Revival in November 2008.
Silence on the Dial, coming to Nova SciFi in either January or June of 2009.

More to come. Stay tuned.