Accepted!

Last Friday was a banner day. It began with the very encouraging rejection letter that I shared in my previous post and was followed later that day by the news that my story Winter Ghost had been accepted for publication in Raconteur Press’ upcoming Wyrd Warfare 3 anthology. Author contract signed and returned. Waiting for the editing process to begin.

Over the weekend, I finished editing all 10,000 words of my Sword & Sorcery story, Tormac and the Slave Ship. And after all the work I did in resizing and rewriting, when I went to submit, I discovered that the theme didn’t fit the anthology. Should have read the fine print. Should have felt put out, but actually quite happy with how the story turned out. Also, I started this whole anthology journey as a writing exercise to learn how to write and edit to specific word counts and timelines. I had to wrestle a lot with this project. Expanded it from 5000 words to 10,000. Exactly the point. Good training. Now I just need to find somewhere else to publish it. I have a publisher in mind, but their word count limit is 8500, so I have some trimming to do (haha). Going to leave it for a week or two.

This week I also finished editing Spirits of Innovation for another Raconteur Press anthology. The submission window opens today. I will submit it this morning on the theory that early submissions might receive more favourable readings. We’ll wait and see.

Yesterday, I completed writing The Nuclear Option for an upcoming Kaiju-themed anthology. This one came out great. Long at 7500 words, but the 2500-word ending just poured out. Way ahead of the submission window. I will shelve it for a week or two before launching into edit mode.

Up next for editing is Uncle Jake’s Follies for the anthology Hold-My-Beer Heroes. Lots of fun.

And what have I done regarding novel prep? Nada. Running out of days to meet my June release goal. Maybe I’ll work on it this afternoon….

Meanwhile, here is a disturbing short story from my Bleeding the Dark Humours collection posted this morning to Substack: https://brainsoupfic.substack.com/p/voices-in-my-head