Publishing and Submitting

It's September, which always feels like the start of the year to me. It brings new pens and notebooks, sometimes even new clothes--but the main thing is that summer is over and my attention is no longer diverted to all those outdoor activities and distractions that keep me from writing.

Still, the summer brought a few publishing successes, including for a brand new story of mine, The Pack, that was published at the end of July by the Literary Fantasy Magazine. You can read my strange little dog tale here, but if you like what you see, you might want to purchase the entire issue, which is available either as a paperback or e-book.  

I also started a process of re-publishing some of my short stories that had disappeared when the literary magazines that published them went out of business. First up was The Black Forest, which is now available as a low-priced (99 cents) Kindle e-book. I also just published Master Gardener in this same format. I'll be offering these as free downloads now and then, but if you want to buy them now, they are as cheap as Amazon will allow. As always, if you do read them, please leave a review--pure gold for authors.

The big publishing news this summer was about Silver Rush, my first installment in a new series of novels and novellas. A Goodreads Giveaway contest just concluded for this book, and I'll be sending out some signed paperback copies to the lucky winners. If you didn't win, or didn't submit your name to the contest, you can still buy the book--it's available as either a paperback or e-book. You can also order the paperback from your local bookstore through the Bookshop website. 

All these publication successes are possible only because I have submitted my finished work many, many times, persisting even when editors and publishers reject it repeatedly. As an example, The Pack was submitted to 13 different places, all of whom turned it down, before I tried the Literary Fantasy Magazine. Most of the 13 places I submitted to were science fiction publishers and while I really didn't think my story was fantasy, I gave it a try -- and the editor accepted my story in less than 24 hours. I'm so glad I didn't give up on this story, which is truly one of my favorites. If you believe in your work and have done your best with it, it's really just a matter of finding the right home for it.

To help me stay on track with submitting pieces this year, I'm participating in the Rejection Competition with a number of other writers. The idea is to log every rejection you receive each month and compete with the other writers to get the most rejections--which, of course, means you submit a lot. I just received a rejection and when I logged it on the spreadsheet, I moved into 3rd place and am now on the leaderboard. Yay! And just to show you the extent of this, that was my 53rd rejection this year, which shows you how many times I've submitted (over 60). I am aiming to submit 75 times this year and am on track to reach that goal. Onward!