Tag: short story

Some Short Story Submissions

After focusing intensely on submitting short stories in 2024, I have to admit, I fell off hard in 2025. However, I haven’t been completely dormant. I’ve been writing a little and submitting a little, so I figured it’s about time for an update.

The Joy of Simultaneous Submissions

I have two stories out on submission right now, and both have been rejected a few times, mostly by big pro markets.

I submit to these big markets first, simply because an acceptance will come with a bigger check and more prestige. It would be fun to have my name on a cover that has been graced with genre greats; the magazines that I read when I was young.

Am I confident that my stories are a high enough caliber for those markets? No, but judging the quality of fiction is such a personal, opinionated thing, and doubly so when you’re the one who wrote it. So why not? It’s worth a shot.

The big magazines and websites can afford to be picky and demanding. They often have months-long slush pile backlogs, and don’t allow multiple or simultaneous submissions. Once you’ve submitted, your story could be in limbo for a quarter, six months, sometimes even longer. All for that <1% chance at a big acceptance.

The stories I have out right now are past all that. They had their shot. Now I’m submitting to lower-paying and less well-known markets. There are three reasons why this is nice.

  1. There are a lot of them! Even in the face of limited reading windows, narrow topics/genres, and themed issues, most stories have at least a couple reasonable places to submit in a given month.
  2. They have smaller slush piles, and that often equates to higher acceptance rates and faster responses.
  3. Many of them accept simultaneous submissions, which means you can send a story to several places at once.

So even though I only have two stories I’m currently submitting, I’ve been able to make 11 submissions, which isn’t too bad.

Timing the Market

Another thing I’ve noticed is that there seem to be a lot of markets that open for submissions in the summer, and close at the end of July or August. There are reading windows all year round, but there are also these larger trends. December and January seem to be the worst times to submit, with so many people out on holiday in the US and Europe.

I still check the Duotrope themed submissions calendar and publishing news pages fairly frequently. Their “Fiction publishers that have recently opened to submissions” list is a great way to track reading windows without trying to keep tabs on all the markets in your genres. The theme deadlines list is easy to glance through to see if anything matches any of the stories that I’m currently shopping around.

Drafts and Critiques

I’m still very behind on my rough drafts and critiques. I wrote a couple stories this year, and I’m now sitting on four that are somewhere between “technically complete” and “needs a final polish.”

The downside of using Critters for critique is that I’m not very good at keeping up my three(ish) critiques per month, so when I have stories I want to submit, I tend to have to do a couple months of critiques to get caught back up. However, with my finished stories out on submission, I really have no excuse. Aside from revision being the toughest part of the job.

The rest of August is going to be busy. I have a family vacation planned for the end of the month, and the kids are back in school the week after.

I’ve set myself a lofty goal of trying to get all four stories edited before the end of the year. That works out to almost one story per month. Doesn’t sound too implausible…until you compare it to my track record for the year so far.

That’s all the news that’s fit to print. How is your summer writing going? Let me know in the comments.

Exhalation — Read Report

Buy on Bookshop.org (affiliate link)

Buy audio book at Libro.fm (affiliate link)

(As I mentioned in my May Read Report, I’m going to try breaking out these posts per-book instead of the monthly summary that I have been writing. That’ll mean more of these posts, but each one shorter and more focused.)

Chiang first appeared on my radar via the 2016 movie Arrival, which is based on his short story “Story of Your Life.” The film made an impression on me by the many things it was able to juggle simultaneously. It is a great first contact sci-fi story and an emotionally fraught personal story that are intimately connected. It’s a great example of Chuck Wendig’s principle from Damn Fine Story—the inner emotional story drives the external action. On top of that, it is told in a cleverly non-linear way that not only enhances the tension, but fits with the key themes of the plot. It remains one of my favorite sci-fi movies.

Exhalation is a collection of nine stories. Two of the longest, The Lifecycle of Software Objects and Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom account for about half of the total length, and the other seven are much shorter in comparison.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects begins with the invention of a rudimentary AI system that is designed to learn and grow. The main character is a former zookeeper turned software developer who is brought in to train and develop these AI companions for the company that hopes to sell them as an advanced Tomagatchi.

The AI companions are a success at first, enough that robot bodies are even produced to allow them to movie around in the real world, albeit a bit clumsily. However, the fad soon loses its momentum as consumers begin to realize that raising these AI is just as much work as raising a human child. They learn slowly, ask difficult questions, and show none of the super-human capabilities that sci-fi has long imagined from AI. The company goes under, but the protagonist and a dwindling group of die-hard believers in the project continue to raise their AI children with the understanding that it will be just as difficult as parenting a human child.

There are no shortage of stories out there about superintelligent AI taking over the world, but far fewer that suggest non-human lifeforms might need just as much raising and growing up as their human counterparts.

In Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom, a device called a “prism” can create a quantum event at the moment of initialization, with two possible outcomes. The result is two parallel realities that diverge at that exact moment, a clunky briefcase laptop linking them with text chat and video calls to its parallel-universe counterpart. Each briefcase has a limited amount of memory it can use to communicate between the two worlds before it is used up, making older or less-used machines more valuable and rare.

The story explores various ways people are affected by this tech. Some obsessively compare their own lives to those of their alternate-universe selves or use alternate realities to justify their decisions. Some use it as an opportunity to “work together” with their alternate selves, or talk with alternates of people who have died in their own world.

While the prism device is the conceit on which the story hinges, it’s really about the choices we make. Alternate realities may make some question the value of a given choice, when the exact opposite is chosen in other worlds. But each choice still has consequences in this one, and an associated moral weight. Is a person defined by the accumulation of their choices across one life, or across infinite parallel lives?

There is little “hard” sci-fi or far-future technology in Chiang’s stories. Stories like The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate, Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny, and Exhalation dip their toes in steampunk sensibilities, while The Lifecycle of Software Objects, What’s Expected of Us, and Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom posit worlds that could essentially be the one we live in today, but for one or two technological additions.

It’s also apparent from these stories that there are a few themes that Chiang keeps returning to, the bigger planets in his solar system, whose gravity is obvious across his work. Time travel and alternate universes are a recurring theme, but this may be because he is so intent on explorations of choice, free will, and whether our decisions have meaning.

As with any sci-fi, technology is at the heart of these stories, but they are not cold and robotic as sci-fi can sometimes be. Writers like Asimov are often critiqued for clockwork plots with flat characters who are merely parts in the machine. That’s certainly not a problem for Chiang. Most of his stories are character-forward, and are about human behavior and belief in the face of the changes wrought by technology. It’s easy to relate to these characters, because they face decidedly human problems in worlds much like ours, where technology drives change and sometimes creates new joys and new pains.

I often want to roll my eyes when speculative fiction authors escape the genre fiction ghetto and get themselves shelved under that haughty label of “literature.” It seems like a flimsy excuse by the gatekeepers to allow themselves to enjoy what they would otherwise be required to look down upon, due to the presence of spaceships or elves. For Chiang, I’ll make an exception. I think he deserves to be widely read, and I’d rather not see people put off by the time machines and intelligent robots.

The Blue Finch and the Chipmunk

I’m happy to announce that my short story, The Blue Finch and the Chipmunk, is in the April issue of Sally Port magazine.

A young apprentice sorcerer must choose whether to help her cantankerous master out of a sticky situation…or use it to her advantage.

Click here to buy the issue or subscribe.

January Writing Update

  • Stories In Progress: 3
  • Submissions Sent: 0
  • Submissions Currently Out: 4
  • Acceptances: 1
  • Rejections: 1

I intended to write this update a couple weeks ago, but I got derailed. More about that in my February update.

I started the year on a positive note, with an acceptance for The Blue Finch and the Chipmunk! It’s scheduled to be published in April, and I’ll have more info on that as it gets closer to release.

Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug remained held for consideration at an anthology. Of course, I hope that this will eventually result in an acceptance, but I’m thinking I may try to send out some simultaneous submissions.

I received a single rejection in January. This was a drabble submission that I felt was a long-shot anyway.

January Goals

As I mentioned in my New Year’s writing resolutions, I will be setting myself monthly goals in 2025. In January, I set myself a goal of writing an average of one page (250 words) of short stories per day.

I’m happy to say that I met that goal, and my total for the month is just under 8000 words. I wasn’t writing every day, but the real benefit of a light goal like this is that it made it possible for me to catch up on the days when I did write. Over the years, I’ve learned that the hardest part of writing for me is getting started, so small goals like this work well, because I’ll often overshoot the word count once I’ve actually gotten going.

The ability to catch up also helps me stay motivated. In the past, I have succeeded with larger goals, like the 1667 words per day that’s standard for NaNoWriMo. Unfortunately, I don’t find that pace sustainable over the long term, and it’s very easy to become demotivated after missing one or two days.

Thanks to my January writing, I now have a nice backlog of completed stories that need editing. I still need to complete post-critique revisions on Red Eyes, and I have two first drafts: a short story I’m currently calling F-TIB, and another called The Scout. I wrote The Scout with less outlining than usual, and it is far too long and unfocused as a result. I will need to figure out which parts I like and then take a hatchet to the rest.

February Plans

My original plan for February was to switch to revision mode in order to get some of these stories edited. I can tell you right now, that plan didn’t end up happening. But I’ll save that for my February writing update.

New Year’s Writing Resolutions

The champagne popped, the ball dropped, and New Year’s is behind us. Now that we’re firmly in the frigid grip of a new January, it’s time for some updates.

I normally don’t go in for New Year’s resolutions, but with my year of short stories now complete, it feels like a good time to reevaluate my writing, the blog, and my goals.

New Monthly Goals

With my serial novel Razor Mountain, I spent two years focused on a single project and eventually ended up burned out. My 2024 year of short stories allowed me to pursue a looser goal where I could work on a variety of different short stories.

In 2025, I’d like to work on something I’ve long struggled with: output. Between my day job and my family, I’m a fairly busy person. I’m also a natural procrastinator, and I know that I often need deadlines (even if they’re artificial ones) to get things done. Previous years’ projects have helped me focus and finish things, but I’m always dogged by the desire to get more done.

My initial idea for 2025 was a simple daily word count, fairly low so I could get used to it. At the beginning of January I decided I would write about a page per day—250 words. My January has already been a little crazy, and I’ve only written on about 50% of the days so far, but I have managed to “catch up” the days I missed, and I’ve stuck to my overall page-per-day requirement. I expect to have at least two short story drafts finished by the end of the month, which is very good for me.

However, I’m already seeing a problem with this word count quota. It’s getting me to write those first drafts, but I’m going to be kicking the can on revisions. I already had Red Eyes revisions carried over from last year, and now I’ll have at least two other drafts that need to be critiqued and polished.

So, instead of carrying my page-per-day goal through the whole year, I’ll only commit to it in January. When February rolls around, I’ll pick a new daily goal, like fifteen minutes of revisions per day. This flexibility will hopefully keep me productive, while allowing me to adjust my goals throughout the year.

The Return of Razor Mountain

That flexibility also gives me the opportunity to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I “finished” Razor Mountain in the sense that it’s a complete story, but it could be better. I’ve had some time away from it, and I’m excited to bring it back in 2025. I haven’t decided how much time I’ll spend, but I do plan to start working on revisions again.

The whole point of Razor Mountain was to document the process of writing a novel, so I will also  continue that tradition by posting all the details of my process, my struggles, and my successes.

More Short Stories

I really enjoyed writing and submitting short stories in 2024, so I plan to dedicate a large amount of my time this year to writing even more of them. I think writing short stories has helped me improve my writing significantly. I love being able to get feedback on something small and self-contained, and I’ve learned almost as much from critiquing other people’s stories.

More Bloggy Stuff?

I don’t yet know how much of my short story work will show up on the blog. I know I’m having a good time, but I suspect my weekly recaps aren’t the most riveting content. In 2025, I’ll probably be more judicious and only post about short stories when I have some bigger topic to talk about.

I will continue some of my long-running series like monthly Read Reports and the Story Idea Vault. I have a backlog of narrative video games to play for my “Games for People Who Prefer to Read” series. I might even perform some necromancy and revive a few of my older posts with new commentary and expanded ideas.

I do sometimes miss the days of years past when I would consistently post here 2-3 times per week. I’d love to say that I’ll be more active like that again, but I think I’d be lying. I just don’t have the bandwidth to do that while pursuing my other writing projects. Still, I love the blog, and I greatly appreciate the folks who continue to stop by. I still expect to post at least once per week.

What About You?

I’m curious if you have any New Year’s writing resolutions. What’s working, what’s not, and what do you plan to change? Let me know in the comments.

Year of Short Stories — Week #52 Retrospective

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

The Final Tally

  • Stories – 7
  • Submissions this year – 35 (5 still out)
  • Acceptances – 1
  • Rejections – 29 (11 higher tier)

Thus ends my Year of Short Stories.

Looking at these numbers, I do wish I had gotten more stories out the door, and I would have loved to get more acceptances. However, I think this is an excellent starting point. If nothing else, I have had a ton of fun writing and submitting stories, and I feel very comfortable with the process now.

The only thing I can do to increase that acceptance count is to write more stories to the best of my ability and continue sending them out.

Refining the Process

Prior to this year, I wrote short stories haphazardly, when an idea struck me and kept my interest. I submitted pieces occasionally, but I never pursued it with any seriousness.

This year, I took it seriously. I polished up a couple of finished stories and wrote several more. I sent stories through Critters critique, while submitting more than 50 of my own critiques of others’ work. I revised those stories far more than anything I have written before.

I know that many authors will grind their teeth while thinking about submitting their work to publishers, but I will argue that this is important practice. Internalizing the standard formatting, writing your own biographical blurb, and learning to write a cover letter—however brief—is valuable. Adjusting all of it to a publisher’s expectations is also important experience.

Today’s technology makes it possible to write alone, revise alone, and publish instantly. I don’t think that’s the way to produce great work, and the long tail of Amazon e-books is evidence of it. The old stereotype of the reclusive author is the exception, not the rule. Creativity is a feedback loop, and that means authors who want to take their craft seriously need to develop professional skills (like selling themselves and their work), and seek honest and tough feedback to actively improve.

Getting a story published by a small website; or a big podcast; or a top-tier, pro-payment magazine tells you something about what you’ve written. “This isn’t quite what we’re looking for” rejections and “send us more of your stuff” rejections are little puzzle pieces that slowly assemble themselves into way markers for future stories.

The indie publishing pundits loves to rag on all the gatekeepers of traditional publishing, and I don’t think anyone should feel beholden to the gatekeepers. But I do think that your writing will become a lot stronger if you push yourself to write stories that can compete with hundreds of other submissions in a slush pile, and catch the eye of jaded, chain-smoking editors who have read more stories in the past year than most of us read in our lifetimes.

That editor doesn’t get to unilaterally decide what’s a good story and what isn’t. But if you can’t find anyone immersed in stories who really likes the thing you’ve written, then it might be time to revise it, or set it aside and write the next thing.

Publishing stories the traditional also way forces you to find your audience. You have to learn what kind of readers and editors like the stuff you’re writing, and that’s incredibly valuable information if you want to get your stories in front of readers who will love them.

The Joy of Short Stories

I love novels, and I’m sure they account for the vast majority of the words I’ve read in my lifetime. Unfortunately, writing a novel is like slaying a giant—it’s not the best thing to try when you’re still learning how to swing a sword.

This past year of experience has confirmed for me that writing short stories is a fantastic way to improve my writing quickly. Writing short stories allows me to jump between genres, to try out new characters and new settings. I can spend a few thousand words with an idea and then let it go. The price of failure is low, and the joy of experimentation is sky-high.

Writing short stories and actively submitting them means I’m exercising all of my authorial muscles. I’m jumping between first drafts, revisions, critiques, and submissions. I’m constantly iterating and incorporating feedback into individual works, but also into my process as a whole.

Rejection and Acceptance

The final takeaway that I have from the past year of writing short stories is more of a Zen attitude toward my own work.

Writing is often incredibly personal. We joke about our stories being like our children. But that kind of protective love makes it harder to improve. It’s hard to take negative feedback on a story if you think of it as your baby. It’s hard to take rejection.

Luckily, the easiest way to overcome those feelings is through brute force. Write lots of stories. Get as much criticism as you can, and then improve them. Send them out, and get rejected, repeatedly. By the time you’ve built up your own little one-person story factory, those pointed critiques start to be fun, because they provide opportunities to make the story better. The rejections roll off your back, and you submit again and move on.

I recently listened to David Sedaris on a podcast, and he said one of the keys to his success was never confusing the writing with the publishing. Ironically, I think the best way to internalize that sentiment is to be repeatedly rejected by publishers.

If you really want to, you can try to follow the market trends. You can improve your odds of publication by submitting to venues that fit your work, and submitting relentlessly. Trying to get paid is hard. Every submission is a job interview with hundreds or thousands of applicants.

And yet, if you already love the writing, getting paid is just a bonus.

Goals for 2025

My Year of Short Stories may be done, but my short story writing will continue. If anything, I’d like to finish more stories this year than I did in 2024. After all, the story factory is built, and I have no shortage of ideas.

Of course, I’d like to get a few more stories published in the upcoming year as well, but I have less control over that. So I’ll just keep submitting.

Year of Short Stories — Weeks #50 and #51

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 2
  • Submissions This Week – 2
  • Submissions Currently Out – 5
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 29 (11 higher tier)

Submissions

I missed last week, so this is a double update. I’m also pretty sure that I started this series a few weeks into the year, and yet I’m approaching week fifty-two…which makes me suspect my count got messed up somewhere. In any case, we’re approaching the end of the year!

One of my drabbles came back two weeks ago, and I had another that had been sitting idle, so I spent some time digging through Duotrope for good places to submit them. I still struggle to find good potential homes for these, as they’re technically “reprints” that have been on the blog previously. I’m currently looking at non-paying markets to expand my options.

Payment in cents per word are generally paltry for 100-word stories anyway, so pursuing the paid options is really just for the ego boost of getting into a bigger, more difficult-to-crack publication.

The Bluefinch and the Chipmunk also came back to me in the past week with a form rejection, which is always disappointing after a longish wait. So it goes. I sent it back out alongside one of the drabbles.

Revisions

I haven’t been doing much on the Red Eyes revisions, and whenever I’m not getting things done, I have that feeling that I ought to work harder. However, I did have several new ideas for the story in the past week, and this is something that happens fairly often when I’m not actively working much on a story, but I have it on my mind. It makes me wonder if the extra time is necessary, or if I’d get to a similar place by spending more time at the keyboard (or at least staring at the screen).

This sort of thing also makes me wonder whether it’s better to let stories sit like this, and work on other things in the meantime, or whether it’s better to stick to one thing to completion. Switching between stories means thinking less about that story in waiting, which means those new ideas and changes in perspective may not come.

I tend to vacillate back and forth on this, sometimes focusing more on a single thing, and sometimes switching between several. Maybe that’s the way to do it.

Goals for Next Week

None. I’m going to enjoy the holidays with my family. If I write, I write. If I don’t, that’s fine too.

Year of Short Stories — Week #48

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 1
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 5
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 28 (11 higher tier)

Submissions

No rejections or new submissions this past week (or rather, this past 4-5 days, since I was late in posting last week’s update). My lone submission the previous week was Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug, which had just come back to me with a contest honorable mention.

Since I do a lot of my writing work on the weekends, I often resend stories and write blog posts in the same day. Before I do that, I look at the Duotrope Theme and Deadline Calendar, and the Publishing News. The calendar gives me a convenient list of themed issues and anthologies with deadlines in the next month, and the news page gives me a list of new publishers and those that have recently opened to submissions. These two lists are incredibly valuable when you’re sending out short stories.

Most weeks, I don’t find anything particularly exciting in the theme calendar, but it’s still worth checking because I occasionally find an upcoming issue or anthology whose theme fits one of the stories that I’m resubmitting that week.

Last week was one of those weeks, and I found an anthology that sounds perfect for Dr. Clipboard. Sure enough, I got a response within a few hours, holding the story for further consideration.

Further Consideration

This is the first time I’ve gotten this style of response for a story submission. As is typical for anything related to short story submissions, Aeryn Rudel has an article. He puts holds, further consideration, and short listing all in the same bucket—a story that someone at the publisher read and liked enough to consider publishing it.

Since most markets are inundated with submissions and will only end up publishing a fraction of the stories they like, it makes sense for them to keep their options open until the end of their submission window.

Not every publisher notifies the writer that their story is being held. They’ll just hold it and either send an acceptance or rejection when they’ve made a final decision. As a writer, you can appreciate a publisher that communicates the hold, or you can be frustrated to have yet another reason to get your hopes up, and possibly disappointed if that hold results in a rejection.

Personally, I’d rather have the additional information. Even if the story ends up being rejected, a positive, personalized response still tells me that the story is probably solid, and I just need to find the right publication for it.

Stories in Progress

I still have some projects lingering from my truncated November “PerShoStoWriMo.” I haven’t gotten a lot of words down for those stories, but they’re still taking up brain space, and I may spend more time with them in the coming weeks.

I’m still in the process of condensing the critiques I received for Red Eyes into actionable changes. In some cases this is a straightforward rewording or cut, but in other cases it requires a fair amount of thought to figure out how I want to address a concern (or if I want to address it at all). I may write a post in the future about this process.

The most interesting piece of feedback I received was that the length of the story is good. It clocks in around 6,500 words, which is long for me, and I explicitly asked readers if they saw any good places to trim that word count. A few readers ignored the question, but most of them said there were no good places to make a significant cut. A couple even said that they’d like to see a longer version of the story. One suggested a novelette, the other suggested a full-blown novel.

While I don’t plan to follow that advice, the unified response does alleviate my fears that the story is too long. I suppose I’m just stuck with a longer story, and I’ll have to deal with that when I’m finished editing and have to look for markets to submit to.

Goals for Next Week

  • Continue revising Red Eyes
  • Spend some time on one of those other story ideas

Year of Short Stories — Week #46 & 47

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 2
  • Submissions This Week – 1
  • Submissions Currently Out – 5
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 28 (11 higher tier)

Happenings

It has been a busy two weeks, and I’ve been neglecting the blog. My wife and I had a double 40th birthday party, which necessitated the first thorough cleaning of the new house. We also finally finished putting away all the little things that had been neglected since the move, and added some finishing touches, like hanging pictures and paint touch-ups.

PerShoStoWriMo (my short-story-writing replacement for NaNoWriMo) was a bust. I tend to do well in these kinds of challenges when I have a good plan at the start and get ahead early. Unfortunately, I started this November a day behind, with merely a concept of a plan, and fell steadily further behind.

I did write drafts for several stories, but I’m nowhere near the original word count goal. Yes, there are still a couple days of November left, but I’m ending it here. It was fun and moderately productive, and that’s good enough.

I do still have one story, tentatively called The Loneliest Number, that’s partly done, and I may still finish it before the end of the month. However, I’ve also got other important things to do, like eat a huge Thanksgiving meal and lay on the couch.

Work in Progress

One of the things that distracted me from PerShoStoWriMo was critiquing. I did a ton of Critters critiques in November so my story, Red Eyes, could go out. Happily, I am now caught up, and I received ten responses, which is pretty good for a 6500-word story.

My next step is to compile all that feedback into a bullet-point list of bigger issues, smaller issues, and potential solutions. Then I’ll get into the revisions.

Submissions

I received two responses for previously submitted stories. My drabble, A Going Away Party, got a form rejection. Interestingly, this was a double submission to a publisher with separate handling of sci-fi and fantasy submissions. The second submission is still marked as “in progress.”

It’s always difficult to guess what’s happening with submissions, but it’s at least potentially a good sign that the second story didn’t get rejected around the same time as the first. Maybe it’s at least being held for consideration. Of course, it could just be a completely separate queue and editors for each story, and the delay doesn’t really mean anything.

The other response was from the Writers of the Future contest, for Dr. Clipboard’s Miracle Wonder Drug. It received an honorable mention, which is nice, although a little further investigation reveals that the contest has quite a few tiers below first, second and third place. There are about a dozen finalists and semi-finalists. Then there are about fifty “silver” honorable mentions, and even more regular honorable mentions beneath that.

There’s no way to determine exactly how many entries the contest gets each quarter, but it’s free to enter and has a big cash prize, so it’s certainly a lot. At least hundreds, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was more than a thousand. So an honorable mention has some value, but I’d peg it as similar to one of those nice rejection letters that says “we liked your story, keep trying.”

I already sent Dr. Clipboard out again, this time to an anthology with a theme that feels like a pretty good fit. A Going Away Party is a drabble and technically a reprint, which makes it a little harder to find good places to send. I may just hang on to it until I see something like a theme issue where it makes sense to submit.

Goals for Next Week

  • Finish The Loneliest Number
  • Sift through Red Eyes critiques

Year of Short Stories — Week #43

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 5+
  • Submissions This Week – 1
  • Submissions Currently Out – 6
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 26 (10 personalized)

PerShoStoWriMo

Week one of my personal short story writing month is in the books, and it didn’t go well!

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I definitely didn’t pull NaNoWriMo “par” numbers, and I missed three days entirely. I’m currently trending toward about 50% of the goal wordcount of 50,000 words by the end of November. And yet, I’m pretty happy with my progress. I’ve blasted through drafts of four short stories so far, and I’m deep into a fifth (considerably longer) story.

I’m being productive with the time I have available. As usual I’m juggling my day job, my kids activities, and other family stuff.

Plus, I have over a week of vacation planned in November, so I may have some time to catch up. Even if I don’t, I’ll still be glad to have gotten quite a few words on the page.

Submissions

I resubmitted The Incident at Pleasant Hills, which came back to me last week.

I’m hoping that I’ll get some responses in the next month or so, but with end-of-year holidays fast approaching, I expect anything that I submit through the end of the year to be out until 2025.

Critiques

I’m still getting caught up on Critters critiques, but the end is in sight now. I’ll catch up sometime this week. This past week is actually when Red Eyes would have hit the top of the queue, so I’m not doing too bad in that regard.

Goals for Next Week

  • Get caught up on critiques!
  • Keep writing short stories for PerShoStoWriMo!