What Is & What Will Be

“She was a published writer. I imagined how thrilling it must be living such a life, going around the world and making up things about it.” -E. L. Doctorow

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Well, not so thrilling, as it turns out. Interesting, yes. Fun, definitely. Boring… never. Most of the time is spent not zipping around the globe, but here in this corner, in this room, at this desk where I sit now. I scribble in notebooks, make faces at open documents in Word & lean my head on my hand as I read submission guidelines for one literary journal after another until my eyes go all googly.

And research… entire days of reading, searching & asking questions.

On really good days, I sit curled up in a comfy chair with my iPad while working on a piece of flash fiction.

It’s really not that thrilling, but it does make me feel glad & complete inside. I don’t believe in sitting around waiting for “the muse” & I find most romantic notions about writers to be clichéd horseshit that gets tossed around by people who like to act like a writer more than they want to actually do the work.

So, speaking of the work, here’s where I write one of those blog posts that says, “here’s the work I’ve been doing & here’s the stuff that’s gonna happen later.”

I don’t post a blog each time one of my stories appears in a lit mag because writing a short post about that each & every time would bore the shit out of me & if I’m bored writing, the only result will be that you’ll be bored reading. While I’m okay with amusing you, or pissing you off, I don’t want to bore you.

However, the past couple of months have been somewhat eventful & there’s some forthcoming stuff happening, so I decided to risk the potential boredom.

The first week of September, Stains From the Mint Julep I Never Tasted appeared in the Autumn issue of The Lowestoft Chronicle.

The Lowestoft Chronicle is one of my favorite journals. Its focus is humor & travel, without feeling like a travel guide.

During that same week, my story Still Life Without Abigail was published in Issue 20 of The Ranfurly Review.

If you follow the link to the site, you can download the entire magazine for free as a PDF file.

I was thrilled when The Ranfurly Review picked this one up – this story is one of those examples of how we as writers make an attempt to give second life to those whose first life was cut too short.

Later in September, Scattered Among So Many Dead Poets was published at the Foundling Review.

This is a really excellent issue, full of emotion. Being included more than makes up for all of the rejections I’ve received from Foundling Review.

Yes, I do keep all of my rejections.

Most recently, my flash fiction piece, Our Sickness was published at Fiction365.

If you like to read some decent short fiction, this is a great publication to subscribe to – you get a new story every day.

In the near future, I’ve got some fiction forthcoming at both Crack the Spine…

… & The Rusty Nail. I don’t have precise publication dates, but they’ll be showing up in the near future.

Right, then… I think that covers the recent lit journal news. Now we can move on to the anthology news.

A couple of months ago, I received news that Every Day Fiction will be releasing a new anthology, The Best of Every Day Fiction Four & will be including one of my stories in that volume. As far as I know, this book will be in print only, with paperback & hardcover editions available through Amazon. I’m sure I’ll have more detailed information once the book is released.

The Molotov Cocktail will also be releasing a print anthology on the first of December & yeah… I’ll be in there somewhere. If you haven’t had a look at The Molotov Cocktail, I highly recommend doing so. Their submission guidelines state that they’re “interested in volatile flash fiction, the kind of prose you cook up in a bathtub and handle with rubber gloves.”

How could anyone not dig that?

Lastly, Rainstorm Press will be releasing the third volume of their “I’ll Never Go Away” series which is a collection of stories about stalkers & will include my story, Protector.

I don’t have any detailed information yet as to the release date for I’ll Never Go Away, Volume III, but I’ll make some kind of announcement when it becomes available.

Of course, there’s still the follow-up to Human Detritus. It’s coming. I know, I’ve been saying that for a while, but it is & now I can tell you that we’re looking at a springtime release. It is going to be another collection of 9 stories, but with a much different tone than Human Detritus, which is a somewhat angry book. There are plenty of other emotions worth exploring besides anger. Probably.

I scattered my energies a bit too much earlier this year; I was working on too many projects at once. The result is good & bad: I didn’t release the second book this year as I originally intended, but also the third book likely won’t take quite so long to see the light of day.

And, this feels like a good time to say: thank you to my fellow Internet Writing Workshop members for letting me learn from you. Thank you to everyone who clicks on the links & reads my work when I post something on Facebook or Twitter about new fiction I’ve got out there. Thank you for buying my little book. All of the messages I’ve received from people about how they could relate to this story or that one is fucking awesome. That’s a big part of why we write – to touch your special inside places.

And if you’re ever in need of some light reading while you’re on the throne, the Stories page is regularly updated.

No, it’s not thrilling. But it’s fulfilling, so I’ll keep going around to as much of the world as I can, making up stuff about it, hoping to reach your special inside places.