September 2018 Recap
I take my Halloween decorations very seriously. This skull had to come home with me.
By the numbers:
Stories out at the beginning of the month: 32
Acceptances received: 1
Rejections received: 18
Stories withdrawn: 0
Resubmissions: 16
New Submissions: 4
Stories out at the end of the month: 31
While it doesn’t seem like I’ve had a whole lot of submissions this month, part of that is that I’ve got a lot of stories out at markets that don’t have quick turnarounds. And I haven’t had this many new submissions since June!
My acceptance was that a very small flash piece I wrote, “Despite All My Rage,” will appear in A Punk Rock Future. I’m looking forward to seeing this one in print, so I can give a copy to Torrey, who basically made this story work.
So yeah, four new stories this month. Two are flash, one is not much over flash length, and the other is a regular short story. One of the flash stories was from the longer contest that I’m participating in. It came in 5th place in its heat, so I made some small tweaks based on the feedback I’d received and sent it out to find a home. I also finished another flash story for another contest. The “not much over flash length” story I wrote was “cryo,” which I salvaged out of my abandoned stories folder. The other story was “star,” which went in a direction I did not expect, but I loved the end result.
I also submitted the first draft of another flash story to the long contest, with feedback to come in early November. Early feedback has been positive, but almost entirely wanting more to the story. And I don’t disagree. I managed to craft a really interesting setting in less than 1,000 words, and I want to play in it more!
The planned mashup stories have been shelved for the time being, since I was feeling really overwhelmed and needed to get something off my plate. Collaborative stories are really neat, but they’re hard to do, too.
I also finished my revisions on Brass and Glass 3, and I wrote about 3 1/2 chapters of Wasteland. Brass and Glass 3 went to one beta reader (who turned around comments in a day–I’m SUPER spoiled) and my editors. Wasteland is proceeding at about the pace I anticipated, and I don’t hate it yet, so that’s a plus!
In October, I’m doing a lot of travelling. I’ve also got a VERY ambitious amount of work planned:
- I’m doing Drawlloween as a flash/poem a day challenge.
- I plan to finish the first draft of Wasteland.
- I’ve got one short story (“wind”) started, and plan to finish the first draft of that and write the first draft of a second short story (“trains”).
- Around mid-month, I’m planning to participate in a short fiction contest that runs through to the beginning of December, but should yield another complete short story (TBD) when all is said and done.
- With all of my flights, I’m planning to read at least three books to review. Maybe four.
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