Saturday, February 15, 2014

"Three Nights" at Kazka Press

My story "Three Nights" is live today at Kazka Press! This is my third publication with them, and on each occasion both Michael Haynes, the editor, and L. Lambert Lawson, the publisher, have been delightfully easy to work with. They also put out, in my opinion, a consistently good publication. I've just started reading this month's other stories, and am thoroughly enjoying them so far.
"Three Nights" was written in direct response to Kazka's theme for February--Dreams. The monthly contest has a 1,000 word limit, and it was quite a challenge to write a dream-centered story that worked (avoiding the dreaded "it was all a dream" ending) while coming in under that limit. I started as the narrator does, with the image of the house in the woods. I hope you enjoy it.

12/6/14 Note: This website is no longer available; Kazka Press stopped publishing several months ago.

Friday, February 14, 2014

"Rob Lithim Used to be Two People" at Daily Science Fiction

Today my story, "Rob Lithim Used to be Two People" went out to Daily Science Fiction's e-mail list. (It won't go live on their site for another week, but I'll post a link when it does. Linked!)
This story is one of my personal favorites. I wrote it years ago, during one of those times when I was not really submitting things. I remember revisiting it a few times, though at this point I couldn't say how substantive each of those revisions was.

I intended "Rob Lithim" initially as a sequel to a longer work, possibly full-length, a more conventional quest story involving a group of friends in a world where superpowers are common. But the sequel just interested me so much more than the original story that I hared off and haven't finished the quest story yet--and of course, now we all know how it ends.

This is my second story published by Daily Science Fiction. ("The Left Side of Your Lover's Broken Face" appeared there in May of 2013.) I hope to see many more. Daily Science Fiction is among my favorite markets, both to read and to write for. Their slush process is clean, concise, and reasonably-paced, and that same efficient professionalism has in my experience continued through publication and payment.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

W1S1 January- Last Minute Notes

I count my writing weeks Sunday-through-Saturday, since the W1S1 group does their check-in post on Sundays. So, I'm going to go ahead and count February first as part of the fifth week of January (as they do). Since I'm doing weekly goals, I think this is logical, although I did have to consider it. Obviously, when I posted on Friday I had a different opinion. But since I'm counting Saturday with last week, I need to update my stats because...I got two more acceptances yesterday!

Or at least, I'm tentatively counting the second one. The editor accepted a flash piece as a reprint, but it's actually a previously unpublished piece. I wrote back to clarify, and I'm betting that it will be fine.

Happy January, everyone! How do you track your stats? Would you put Feb 1 news with January because of the way the week falls, or do you go strictly by months?