"After Closing" at Enchanted Spark

Melinda Moore, a fellow writer of short fantasy, maintains an active blog and website called Enchanted Spark. As part of the site, she runs a short story contest every two months called the "Photo Flare Contest." She posts photos, and submitted stories must incorporate the photos or be inspired by them. In February, she added a flash contest running concurrently, and I won it! "After Closing," my winning story, is a light piece about gremlins living an an amusement park. Check it out!

Melinda hosts weekly check-ins on her blog for writers wishing to report their word-count and commiserate with or inspire each other. She's upbeat, friendly, and has been just as easy-going and positive behind the scenes as she is in her public posts.

"Gray Ebenezer" in Penumbra's March Issue

This month my story, "Gray Ebenezer" was published as part of Penumbra eZine's March issue. I'm very excited about this publication. I love the story, of course. I love the art they chose for the magazine cover--and I got the cover spot! I had no idea I was going to, and I'm over the moon about it.

As an added bonus, I share the table of contents of this issue with Michael Haynes, one of my writing role models and the editor of Kazka Press's 713 flash contest. His 2012 and 2013 year-end reviews on his blog have provided a lot of inspiration for me. I'm hoping at the end of this year I'll have something similar to post!

Penumbra also asked me to to a guest post on their blog. "A Moment in Heaven with Brynn MacNab" describes my version of a special heaven for writers--and my first ever guest blog post!

Penumbra has been a dream to work with, and I sincerely hope this is the first of many publications with them.

"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.

"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.

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?

Write 1/Sub 1 January

This year I've joined the group over at Write 1 Sub 1. I'm doing the weekly challenge, writing and submitting a story each week (although not always the same story). "Challenge" is definitely the word for it! If you're looking for a boost to your motivation and productivity, I recommend hanging around with these folks. It's the perfect blend of scary, inspiring, and encouraging, and there are writers at many different levels of skill and experience among the regulars there.

I managed to keep up this month, with 5 stories written and 6 submitted for the first time. Breaking those down a little, I completed rough drafts of 3 flash pieces and 2 short stories, and submitted 4 flash pieces and 2 short stories.

The rejections keep rolling in, as ever, although they haven't been particularly heavy this month. I attribute this in part to the fact that I got back into serious submitting in December after a bit of a hiatus, and with some markets that means I can't expect to hear back just yet. I've also probably been noticing the rejections a lot less than I normally do, as I've had an unusual number of story acceptances--3 for the month, 2 flash and one a bit longer. I look forward to posting more about those stories as they come out.

Three actually doesn't sound like such an impressive number, now that I write it out. But for me it's huge, considering that I only had three stories published in 2012 and 2013 combined!

I also had a story published this month. Check out The Price of Awakening at Kazka Press!

Welcome!

Welcome to my Writer's Website. I expect to update from time to time with publishing news, but for now at least this will not be a proper blog. If you have come here from one of my short stories, I'm delighted that you enjoyed it! You can find more of my work on the "Publications" page.