Acceptance thread

[TerryE]

Congrats, Nik. You'll have to remind us when it comes out.

[ozmosis7]

Not sure if I said congrats, Michael, but congrats on the competition. Also, congrats Nik.

[Lauren Dixon]

HUZZAH! I CAN FINALLY ANNOUNCE that my 13,500 word story Son of Abyss will appear in Monstrous Affections, an anthology of original stories edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, published by Candlewick in 2014.

A coming-of-age story about blood sacrifice, the rough draft was written at Clarion West, the residential writers program I attended for six weeks last summer. I can't spill the beans on any of the authors involved in the antho, but I'm incredibly honored/humbled/thrilled to be among them.

Party on, Nik! Congratulations, dude!

[Michael Wehunt]

Awesome news, Nik! Congratulations, that looks great.

And thanks very much, Kenneth. Fingers crossed.

[T-Dogz_AK47]

Congratulations Nik!!!

[Victorya]

Woot and congrats on so many acceptances!

[Michael Wehunt]

Some of you may know that Shock Totem hosts five flash fiction contests per year, in which participants vote on their favorite stories. I won two of them in 2013. After the final contest, a neutral judge is given the five first-place stories from throughout the year, and he or she chooses one as the year's overall winner. One of mine, "Stabat Mater," won! It will appear in Shock Totem #8, due in January. I love this magazine, and it'll be my second story published with them.

[RichardThomas]

congrats, michael, that's fantastic news! i've been trying to break into ST for years now.

[Michael Wehunt]

Thanks, Richard. They're good folks at ST.

[bookworm 1]

Another good place for dark fiction. Seems Dark Fiction magazines are making a come back. CD is back on track as is DD and ST and there are a few new ones as well. Congrats Michael.

[Randy D. Rubin]

Is CD taking fiction submissions again? If so til when?

[William J. Grabowski]

Acceptance Thread Synchronicity

Excellent, Michael. Not many realize how difficult flash-fiction is to write. I heard just this morning that my short story, "Out Hunting for Teeth," sold to a forthcoming (June 2014) anthology, VISIONS, edited by Daniel Howard. The piece--set in post-Hiroshima rural Japan--was inspired by the paintings of Francisco Goya, and the writings of Italo Calvino and Yukio Mishima. I had, for some unknown reason, never seen this thread until tonight!

[Kristopher Kelly]

Big congrats to Michael on a fabulous year. Been trying to break into ST and CD myself, and you made it happen all in one year. Amazing work!

Wanted to post here also to say that a flash fiction piece of mine, "The Side-Effect," has been accepted to an upcoming anthology, "Vignettes from the End of the World," by the people behind Lamplight and Dark Bits. They said reprints and zombie stories would be tougher sells; my piece was both, so ha-ha. It's from my self-published collection I Held My Breath as Long as I Could, which brings the count of published stories in it to 3 (of 23). Might've just missed the cut for CD this year (and received far too many "Great story really liked it but no"-style rejections), but at least I managed to get some acceptances from the void this year.

Some self-promotion: The collection is available right now for $0.99, and I'm still proud of it (one of the stories in it won a fiction prize at Harvard, so ... it's got that going for it, which is nice), though I don't plan to self-pub again for a long time, if ever. But, if you have a mind to, check out the collection, as well as my (likewise foolishly self-pubbed) novella, Abraham Road, which I describe as John Steinbeck writing an H. P. Lovecraft tale (or vice versa), also $0.99 right now. It's a quick read, divided into eight 3,000 word chapters containing three 1,000-word dramatic scenes, so ... yeah. I broke out the metronome on that one and did my best to make every moment count. Proud of it, too, but I clearly don't know what I'm doing with self-publishing, because it certainly hasn't sold well. I guess the ending is a bit too off-the-rails for most. Live and learn.

Happy new year!

[ozmosis7]

Congrats Kristopher. Still waiting to hear back on that one myself.

[Kristopher Kelly]

Good luck, Kenneth. Hope you hear back soon (and in the positive).