Busy Times & Catch Up

I've been bad and neglected the blog, so time to change that.

March was a busy month in terms of writing. Three new short stories, a revision of Dead Truth [old short story], and finished the third revision of my Fire & Frost. All for calls due by the end of the month or mid-April. The revisions were rejected to my disappointment. Fire and Frost is sort of my baby, getting refined and expanded upon each time I've gone back to it. One of the short stories was also turned down, as it didn't quite fit the need of the call. The two short stories are ones that stretched me in terms of writing. Both covered subject matter that's both touchy and in one case, the protagonist was not a nice person by anyone's definition.

The good news out of effort came as acceptance for the other two short stories. Both came with a request with minor revisions and suggestions on expansion. The first one got a conditional acceptance pending revisions. Sadly, I can't say which story or call yet, as contracts have not been signed, but damn, it's a good one. Story two is Broken Horn and will be published in November by Alchemy Press in the the anthology "Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac". I wrote about Capricorn, not a sign I was familiar. That was a crash course of reading about the sign and coming up with an interesting twist on the sign. Quite proud of it and the fact that I got an "urban fantasy" story in print sometime in November.

May saw a couple of new stories and quite a few false starts. It also entailed a forth revision of Fire & Frost, adding in 6k words, a new subplot, and expanding existing scenes. I've got a publisher targeted for this version and think [cross fingers] that it fits. If not, I'm turning it into a full length novel. That would mean tripling the word count.

Looking at my list, in the past year of writing I've revised Fire & Frost three times, written over a dozen short stories, sold three, and got a forth pending. Not making me rich, but it's a start.