My Story Is Now Live

I've spent the last week wondering whether I had a sale or not, and just as I am about to query, I get a message that yes, they're ready to publish my story. Maybe I should've queried right after the message that looked like a server burp.

But the story is up now. It's The End of Her Line and it's at Every Day Fiction, which publishes a short-short of 1000 words or less every day of the year.

Do I Have a Sale?

Last night I got a really weird e-mail from an online market to which I'd submitted a story. A single line of text rather like code, which looked more like a server burp than a rejection.

Today I get onto their website, and they're definitely having problems. A bunch of pages return me messages that look more like SQL database errors. But I was able to get onto their submission tracking page, and it looks like they may have accepted the story.

So now I wait to see whether it's true or it was an error. I so hope it's for real, and doesn't evaporate on me like so many other sales in the past.

Like I Need Another

short story to write, that is. I just finished drafting "The Sound of One Child Crying" and was getting ready to make a major push on "A Brother's Love" when I come across a listing for an anthology of stories set in the Appalachians and dealing with magic. And now I'm thinking of how I could write a steampunk story, sort of along the lines of The Music Man but with a magician who thinks it's all flummery to better con the marks, but maybe there is some real magic in the world, whether supernatural or merely metaphorical.

At least the deadline on it isn't until June, and it looks like the editor isn't going to be making final decisions until sometime in July, so at least it's not like I've got to immediately plunge into it. So I can make a few notes and let it simmer.

But I'd really like to get back to work on Briar's Children, because I am really a natural novelist, and short stories don't come easy to me. Not to mention that novels are really where the money is.