Category Archives: Career Progress

A Review Is In!

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Wanted to drop a quick note to share some cool news with you:

My latest story, “A Look at the Rise of Jihyun “Sardonicus” Layne From Pirate to Chancellor Through the Official Communiques of Her Predecessor” has been reviewed along with the other ten stories in the latest (and for now last) issue of The Sockdolager over at Quick Sip Reviews.

To say I’m thrilled to see that reviewer, Charles Payseur, liked the story would be a serious understatement. If you’ve read the issue, or are the sort who doesn’t mind spoilers, I strongly suggest heading over and checking out the full issue’s review. It’s a big post for a big issue, but it’s well worth your time.

Might I also suggest considering checking out Charles’ patreon and consider lending some support there? Supporting good markets is obviously incredibly important, especially in the face of losing venues such as The Sockdolager, but reviewers like Charles are also playing a really important role in the field. There’s no point to having good stories out there if no one is reading them or talking about them and reviewers help raise visibility and get the conversations started.

120 Authors – 230 Tales – 1.1 Million Words! All Free!

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Check out that title! That is what you’ll find if you go download yourself a copy of Up and Coming: Stories from the 2016 Campbell-Eligble Writers.

This mega-anthology was put together by writers SL Huang and Kurt Hunt, themselves Campbell Eligible this year, to showcase the vast range of new talent out there in the speculative fiction field. Continue reading →

Submission Stats: January 2016

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Time for some accountability. The first month of 2016 has come and gone and while I have no new stories completed yet I did have my mind in the writing game. I’ve revised some older stories and I’ve been submitting. Specifically:

  • I sent out 12 submissions (including a late night new year’s eve submission that I’m counting)
  • I received 6 form rejections
  • I also got 2 personal rejections (quite nice ones actually)
  • As of this post I still have 6 submissions out and awaiting responses
  • I have one finished story I’m deciding where to send next

Regarding that last point – I’m thinking I’ll be sitting on it awhile if only because there are some currently closed to submissions markets I expect to open by April/May that might be good fits and pretty much all the markets I could send it to right now would likely take even longer than that to answer back.

So that’s January’s nutshell. Bring on February.

Hello 2016!

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Hello, hello, hello.

2016 is here; 2015 is dead and decomposing out back. I’m here to bury that beast and lay out some solid plans for moving forward.

Last week I read a post by Troy L. Wiggins over at his blog afrofantasy.net entitled: “Set it Off: My Writing Goals for 2016”.  Inspired by that I decided I needed to codify my own goals and purposes for 2016. Because I have to say, my handling of 2015 was not good.

Strangely enough 2015 was both the best and worst year of my short writing career so far. Two pieces of mine were published by a couple of serious, pro, real-deal fiction markets.

  • “H” was published by Daily Science Fiction
  • “All of Our Days” was published by Fireside Fiction.

They are both free to read, so I hope you will.

That was the public face of my writing career, and hey – it was awesome. Unfortunately, behind the scenes I was doing little to progress my skills or career. I had the same few stories that I continue to believe in and send out on submissions and I wrote exactly 2 new pieces. One was finished in the summer and received an amazing personal rejection from it’s first market and is out there now, trying to find a home. The other was written on New Year’s Eve. Well, I had 300 words written and a couple weeks of thinking about it before NYE, but come noon on NYE day that’s all I had and a midnight PST deadline I wanted to meet before the story’s target market closed for submissions. Continue reading →

Look What I Found

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So I’ll admit it: Now that I have a couple stories published I went and did some ego-searches on the Google. Much to my surprise and delight I actually discovered two very nice little reviews of my work. One of them quite old, one quite recent, and, well, if I’m the sort who’s going to go looking for them then I’m probably the sort who will share them. At least this first time, having never had reviews to share before.

In the old category we have Emily Short’s review of “Future Voices” the interactive fiction anthology that was published as a free iOS-app a couple years ago by inkle. My story “Facing Life, Facing Death” had won a place in it (4th place to be specific) and Emily calls it out as one of the three more interesting pieces in the collection.

In the recent category my story “H“, published back on April 30th by Daily Science Fiction, found it’s way onto Amy Sisson’s reading list. She is trying to read at least one short story a day for the year. In her monthly round up for stories she read in May she included “H” as one of the three “true stand-outs” she read that month.

I wont lie folks, these reviews put a smile on my face, and I hope if you’ve never checked out either of these stories they might convince you to give them a whirl.