Diversification

It continues to be fun writing stories for Raconteur Press. Their monthly anthology themes and 5000-8000 word count continue to challenge me in good ways, forcing me to grow as a writer. But at some point in the journey, I need writing credits on my resume from other publications.

To that end, this week I went online to research submission options for some of my homeless stories. I wound up submitting four previously written stories to untested markets: Backcountry Adventures sent to Die Laughing, Happy Bris-Day to Weird Lit Mag, Misfit Pieces to Diabolical Plots, and Haven’t We Been Here Before to Lightspeed Magazine.

Began writing for Raconteur’s upcoming Wyrd, Wyrd World of Sports prematurely. I’m 8000 words into a dark, zombie story which I am enjoying. Problem is that this week the editor released her story guidelines for the anthology: 80s PG, family friendly preferably with humour. Oops. Definitely not the story I have written.

So, what now? I’m going to finish my post-apocalyptic zombie story because I enjoy it. Then I’ll need to edit it and search for a suitable home for it. And then, I am going to unpack the cast of characters from my unpublished story, Best Kind of Pet, and see if the characters can suit up to fit the anthology criteria.

Last week I submitted Soiled Undies to Arcadia Books. Have been researching other potential publishers with no success so far.

Running low on short fiction inside my current Substack themed collections, I dug deep for a previously unsubmitted YA comedy short: First Contact: Creamed in Smithtown
https://open.substack.com/pub/brainsoupfic/p/first-contact-creamed-in-smithtown?r=1vg5y9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

If I plan to continue publishing a story per week (and I do), I may have to consider adding a new category to my Substack in order to pull from my previously untapped collections, or else I will need to get cracking on editing some of my unfinished drafts.