Well, Now.

Tuesday night, after one hell of a rough shift at work, I came home to find an email waiting for me. It was from the publisher I’d submitted Teahouse to.

In the Teahouse will be published by Library of the Living Dead Press.

Yeah, I about had a heart attack. There are roughly a thousand things I could say right now but none of them seem to make any sense at the moment. I’ll just stick with this short notification for the blog and perhaps expand on things a bit once things feel a bit more real. Suffice it to say, though, that I’m back in the research loop, digging up little things here and there to add a bit more spit and polish to the final draft.

In the meantime, school will be letting out in about two weeks, at which point I’ll be dedicating my entire summer to writing or writing-related projects. I’ve got edits and additions to make for Teahouse, the back half of Ghostbox to finally write, edits to work on for Kody Boye’s Amorous Things and my chapter contributions to Collaboration With the Dead to scribble out. All this and I’ve begun research on novel number three, which is as of yet unnamed and deals with ghosts in Vietnam.

This summer is going to rock.

"Beneath the Earth, the Pool" Appearing in Letters From the Dead

It looks as if my short story “Beneath the Earth, the Pool” will be in the upcoming anthology Letters from the Dead, published by Library of the Living Dead Press. It’s a short piece about the transcontinental friendship of two longtime pen pals (one American, one German) during the outbreak of an apocalyptic virus.

I’m very excited to be a part of this anthology. Like all other Library titles, this is going to be filled with a wide range of interesting shorts, this time tied together through the context of the Reaper Virus. It will be a lot of fun to read the rest of the stories and see how they all fit within the same universe.

"Reanimated Marital Advice" appearing in The Moron's Guide to the Inevitable Zombocalypse

I received an email from Tim Long, editor of Library of the Living Dead’s The Moron’s Guide to the Inevitable Zombocalypse (and author of Among the Living and The Zombie-Wilson Diaries) last night. My short story “Reanimated Marital Advice,” will be included in the collection.

This is my second acceptance for a Library anthology (along with Baconology, edited by Victorya), and I’m very excited. Both this small press publisher and 2009 in general have been very kind to me.

A Few Rejections and a Big Old Slab of Bacon

Fall must be a very busy time for editors. Of the ten or so submissions I’ve sent out in the last few months, a few have come back. I received rejections from Pill Hill Press (for their Bitter End nautical anthology) and Every Day Fiction (for a flash piece about a book burner). Pill Hill was a disappointment, as I’m a big fan of theirs (and have been accepted by them before), but you can’t always bat a thousand, even with familiar publishers. They’ve got another anthology, Love Kills, that I’m thinking of submitting to soon, so I may have another chance with them in the future.

Last night, while working on a few things in front of my laptop, my email application lit up. I’ve tried to unsubscribe myself from every irrelevant mailing list I receive so that I don’t have to wade through tons of junk just to get to important emails, though that’s only been marginally successful so far. I still find I have emails waiting for me, hoping they’ll be about a submission, only to find they’re advertisements or other stuff I could care less about.

I wasn’t expecting much, but when I checked my inbox I found it was from Victorya, editor of Library of Horror’s upcoming Baconology anthology. Yes, it’s a collection of horror stories involving bacon as a main element. It’s a real book, and it’s coming out.

And I’m going to be in it.

This is one of the submissions I’d been anxiously waiting on a response for. Up until last night, I’d never been in a Library publication and it was something I really wanted to get involved in. Now I have that opportunity, as my story, “Porn and the First-Person Shooter,” will be appearing in Baconology.

I’ve been jittery and excited since I read the email. Really, really looking forward to this. I can’t even imagine what the cover art is going to be.

So, for the year so far that makes two anthologies, at least two small press print publications, an internet serial novel, several appearances on fiction sites and two placements in flash contests. I still have a few submissions still floating around, for another two anthologies and a few more magazines.

I feel so lucky right now.

First Anthology Sale!

I’ve been published both online and in small press magazines before, but never a book. Next year, that will have changed. My short story “Forward Forward Forward” is appearing in Pill Hill Press’s collection Twisted Legends: Urbanized and Unauthorized.

I can’t wait for my contributor copy!