Your Short Fiction!

Let's talk about those unpublished short stories you have.

You know, the ones in that file. The ones you haven't sent out? Yeah, THOSE stories. I have a question for you. Why haven't you sent them out?

Don't look at me like that. I mean.it. Seriously! Some of those are really good. You know they are. And if you send them out, circulate them around, you never know, someone might pick one up and publish it.

What's that? So what? So what?! Here's what: the more short stories you have published, the more credits you have. The more credits you have, the more likely an agent, editor or publisher is to give you the time of day. Plus, some markets submit really good stories for awards... and if you've won a short fiction award, you're all the more attractive to a potential connection that's a few rungs higher up the industry ladder... know what I mean?

I understand you're nervous about it. But don't be! Remember, the only thing they can say is "no". And you have to start getting rejected if you're ever going to get accepted, remember? So let me go over some things with you this week to help you along the way of getting some of your short fiction published. We'll talk about polishing and formatting, finding markets to publish your work, cover letters, keeping yourself organized and dealing with rejection. Any other aspects of short fiction publishing you'd like to discuss? Just let me know in the comments today.

I've missed you guys and am so happy to be back at the helm of my blog. Full speed ahead, the week's laid about before us in a sparkling swath of possibility!

"Out of the Blue" Now in Print!

Guess what! My short story "Out of the Blue" is now available in volume 6, issue 1 of moonShine Review!

The story is inspired by the song "Brother" by Murder By Death. I got permission from the band to quote the song in the publication too! How cool is that?

Here's the first couple paragraphs of the story:

The nurse was finishing the scheduled 3:00 p.m. change of my father’s saline drip when I looked up and saw Jack standing silently in the doorway, his eyes locked on the wasted body in the bed. I saw a tiny flutter in Jack’s jaw and knew he was grinding his teeth. It was an old trick we learned as kids – to grind our jaws so hard we wouldn’t cry. The only problem is, it’s hell on the teeth: I’ve got a mouthful of metal, have since I was seventeen, when three of my molars crumbled within two months of each other. High school killed my damn teeth. I was perversely glad to see Jack remembered the trick; I’d been using it a lot lately myself.

He was too thin, and his clothes hung on his body in odd ways, but otherwise he looked exactly as he had six years ago at the Greyhound station – on the day he’d been paroled. That rainy February afternoon was the last time I’d seen him. A lifetime had passed between now and then, and it stretched out in the sterile silence of my father’s hospital room like a highway filled with strange and undiscovered scenery.

The story's about an uneasy reconciliation between the two brothers, and it's probably the most "literary" piece I've ever written. No horror in this one at all - which is NOT par for the course for me. Still, it's a nice little piece and I'm proud of it, and I'm so glad it got picked up by such a fantastic market.

If you'd like to purchase your own copy of moonShine Review, click here or check out the sidebar... I added it to the list of links.

And for those of you who made guesses as to what was truth and what was fiction yesterday... those of you who guessed Gaga were correct! While I did set up the party for Nickleback in April (thanks for noting my tell, Lee, LOL), I haven't had a famous person come bowl at my center since. I loved reading each of your guesses. Thank you so much for reading and commenting!

Now I'm nominating seven creative liar- ahem, writers to continue the blog award! I pass this award on to:

Wendy Ramer
Janet Johnson
Maurice Mitchell
Alex Fleetwood at Hampshire Flyer
Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out
Alex J. Cavanaugh
Ellie at Ella's Edge

I'm excited to hear your truths... and lies!

Agent or No?

I read this excellent article the other day on Great Writing. It's called "Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes" and it was written by Stephen King.

There are some really wonderful tips in here, many of which are featured in the book On Writing. If you get a chance today, you should bounce over there and take a look at the list. It's a great read.

The point which I've been thinking about a lot over the past few days is #11: An agent? Forget it. For now. King has this to say about agents:

Agents get 10% of monies earned by their clients. 10% of nothing is nothing. Agents also have to pay the rent. Beginning writers do not contribute to that or any other necessity of life. Flog your stories around yourself. If you've done a novel, send around query letters to publishers, one by one, and follow up with sample chapters and/or the manuscript complete. And remember Stephen King's First Rule of Writers and Agents, learned by bitter personal experience: You don't need one until you're making enough for someone to steal ... and if you're making that much, you'll be able to take your pick of good agents.

I'm very close to finishing the first draft of my WIP novel, and while I haven't started shopping for an agent yet, I've been kicking the idea around in the back of my mind for a couple of months. After all, part of my timeline is going to the South Carolina Writers' Workshop to meet an agent, or possibly a host of them. I guess I thought of agents as advisers who go to bat for writers with publishing companies. But now that I've read this, I see his point. No agent is going to represent someone they can't make money off of.

So how do I handle the next phase of the MS without an agent? Do I shop my book to big publishers and just hope for the best? At this point, I still want to go to the conference and talk to some agents. I know Stephen King had a bad experience with an agent and this happens to a lot of people, but at the same time I am very intimidated by the idea of soliciting my manuscript without representation.

Writers, I need your input here. Do you work with an agent or are you flying solo? Which do you prefer? Which makes more sense? And how did you meet your agent (if you have one)? If you sent an unsolicited MS... did you send it to someone you know, or just send it out blindly?

Any and all comments are appreciated!

The Proverbial Horse

I received a rejection letter from The Pedestal Magazine for my story "Knights of the Road" today.

All right. Let's go ahead and get this out of the way: I know rejections are only a numbers game. I know the more rejections I get the closer I come to having another short published. I know my personal writing hero, Stephen King, had a nail above his desk that he put hundreds of rejection slips on, so many that it made the spike fall off the wall at one point from the weight. I know it's something we all have to deal with. I even wrote a blog entry a few weeks ago, about riding the rejection train.

But knowing all these things doesn't make that rejection letter any easier to read. "We don't want your stuff", regardless of how you phrase it, is never fun to hear. When I saw the email in my inbox this afternoon from The Pedestal Magazine, I had that little rush of excitement flutter through my midsection. I summoned positive thoughts. I visualized success. And then I clicked on the email, and read what it had to say.

Clunk. Another "no thanks" to add to my pile.

So now, as I did back at the beginning of February, I'm using the rejection to bolster my confidence as best I can. I went back over the story, polished it and changed it again. I tightened the action, took out vagueness, and made it a lot punchier (at least, in my opinion). When I was done with it, I was a lot happier with the end result. I then, before I lost my courage, sent it to Weird Tales, one of the last holy grails of dark fiction and fantasy publication.

I'm starting to wonder if short stories are just not my forte. Now that I've been writing my novel for several months, I've realized that I'm a long-distance writer... I'm much better in extended formats, that allow me to develop characters and plot and tension in my own time. Short stories can be limiting, because you have to show only small portions of those things... and I've never been one for small portions. Looking over my rejection list (which keeps growing longer and longer), I can't help but feel a little discouraged. I know my shorts are good... so why can't I move them in a market?

But I won't give up. I have to get back on the horse, no matter how many times it throws me. Sooner or later I will have that bitch tamed. You can count on it.

A Cappella Zoo and "The Letter"

I found out something pretty exciting day before yesterday: my story "The Letter" is now available online at the A Cappella Zoo eZine!

A Cappella Zoo is a perfect-bound, beautiful print magazine that also posts their past issues online with authors' permissions. I found this market through Duotrope, which is an amazing online resource for fiction and poetry writers.

A word about Duotrope... Duotrope is an online writers' market which is in a constant state of being updated by their dedicated staff. There's a search engine on the website that's easy to use and searches over 1000 markets for the print publications that fit a writer's particular publishing needs. It's a very customizable engine and you can sort by all kinds of things... how the market is issued (print or electronic), what the market pays, genre, response time to submissions, percentage of acceptances, how the market accepts work (through post or email), and lots of other options as well. I've found it to be one of the most valuable tools I've used over the last few years. It's always up-to-date, and new markets are added every day. There's also a nifty submissions tracker where you update your personal information on which markets you've sent work to. It keeps track of all their information so you don't have to! Fellow writers, if you haven't seen it yet, you really should check it out.

OK, back to A Cappella Zoo. I was published in the spring volume of this market last year, in Volume One, Issue Two. This was the first piece I was ever paid for - very exciting! They offered to pay via PayPal or check, and I asked for a check so I could have something physical to put in a frame. Call me sentimental, but getting paid for my work for the first time was so monumental, I had to celebrate it somehow.

I couldn't have been more pleased with how the book looked and felt in my hands, and my story began on page 75 of the volume - a number that has significance for me, as it's the year of my birth and the number I use in my email address. Here's a picture of the beautiful cover, artwork by Jim Fuess:


I was tickled by how professional it looked and how excited the editor, Colin, was about his market and my story. He was a joy to work with, and still is. He sends out regular updates to his contributors and asks us to make sure we send updated author bios every now and again so the information on the A Cappella Zoo website is correct. He's also offered to review my novel when it's completed! What a great market to work with.

The story is set in Charleston, and it's about a lonely, sad man who meets a peculiar old woman one day at the busy downtown Charleston old Slave Market - a sort of high-class flea market that's walking distance from many significant locations in downtown Charleston. The old woman gives him a gift: one wish for his birthday. I wrote this story several years ago, back in '99 or '00. When I pulled it out of my archives and dusted it off in 2008, I saw it needed only minimal tweaks and a little polishing, so I cleaned it up and sent it out. It only had one stop before A Cappella Zoo, where it found a happy home. This publication was a great experience.

The online version of "The Letter" can be found here. If you decide to take a gander at it, I'd love to know what you think, dear readers.

I'm so excited to have a piece published in an online eZine that I can send my new friends to! I love being able to point people in the direction of my work so they can get a taste of what I do. Thanks, A Cappella Zoo and Colin!