Publication awesomesauce! I mean, er…publication news. Yes, that.

Right, folks! I have a few announcements, of the publication variety. I have a bit of steampunk flash fiction out in a journal today, and the short story I published last year is now included in a hardback anthology! I know, right?

Here’s the details.

Winding Down

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My longtime readers might recognize this piece, since I posted it on my blog last spring, or thereabouts. But I thought to myself, ‘Self, why would you let a good story languish on the ol’ blog, when you know a fella who runs a cool steampunk zine? Why not see if he would like the piece?’

So then I responded to myself, saying, “Why not indeed!”

I deleted my old blog post, saved the story in standard manuscript format, and sent it off via normal submission channels. And wouldn’t you know, it got picked up!

If you haven’t read “Winding Down” before, won’t you surf on over to Doctor Fantastique’s Show of Wonders to read it? And do let me know what you think!

Silence Like Deep Water

This one many of you may have read also, but I thought I’d announce this little slice of awesome here anyway. My biggest short story sale to date, to Short Story America last November, came with a few additional perqs.* Sure, I got paid for the story, and got the publication credit, which is gold for us writers, don’tcha know? But the story was also slated for publication in the end-of-year anthology put out by the SSA publisher.

And now the anthology is available for purchase at the Short Story America website! I gotta tell you, people, I’m pretty excited about this. I’m in hardcover! That’s a milestone of sorts, right?

So if you’d like a nicely bound copy of the best story I’ve ever written, click through to check it out, eh?

Oh, and another nice surprise? When I got a peek at an image of the book’s dust jacket, I checked the list of stories on the inside flap, and…um…mine is listed third from the top!

To quote Rachel Zoe: I die.

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Y’know, maybe I should start sending out more of my work to journals. Yes, I should. I like making announcements like this. *nods*

Happy weekend, everyone!

*Yes, it’s perqs. It’s short for perquisites. What? Look it up if you don’t believe me! :)

Regrets

The man across the bar winks and motions for a refill. She bends for the bottle, feeling the old pain grip her lower back.

He leers at her as she sets the drink before him. She smiles back, emptily, thinking of the feel of ballet flats, of how it felt to soar.

The stories…they won’t stop!

Writer-friends, I won’t lie to you: I’ve been in a writing-funk recently. And by recently, I mean the past couple of weeks. It sucks.

Sure, I could make excuses like my dayjob’s been stupid busy and stressful, and the impending spring means that our garden needs tended to pretty urgently, and the kids are demanding, and the house is falling apart at the seams and needs renovating, but the fact is, I don’t feel quite right unless I’m writing. If I haven’t produced some fiction by the end of the day, I don’t feel as though I’ve been productive, no matter how many dayjob tasks I’ve completed, or how much child-corralling I’ve done.  (I may have mentioned this before.)

So there I was last week, on the road for work, sipping sake, reading Hemingway, nomming on sushi at a Japanese restaurant near the hotel I was staying at, and feeling fairly crappy about my writerly output over the past couple weeks, and then it hit me.

Mmm…sushi….

See, I would read a few paragraphs of Hemingway, then look up to take a bite of nigiri, a sip of sake, whatever, and I’d see the other diners in the restaurant. I’d see their expressions, their body language, their mannerisms, and the words would appear in my head. What I was seeing would translate instantly into words, into sentences, scenes.

I think you know what I’m talking about.

I discovered that we can’t turn it off, writer-friends. It doesn’t matter how bad we feel about ourselves, our writing, our commitment to the craft. If the words arrive unbidden, without our asking for them, we are writers! We cannot help ourselves.

Experience, for me, now, is filtered through the medium of writing. I can’t see something without thinking about how to describe it, how to set it down in words. Even the stuff that hurts turns into words in my mind as I experience it. It can’t be undone.

So what if I felt shitty about my writing, my talent, my commitment for a while? It happens. Doesn’t mean I’m not a writer anymore. It just means I’m in a lull, a low, a funk, of sorts. I’ll come out of it.

Because the stories don’t stop just because I’m feeling bad. The stories never stop.

I am a writer. I must own that.

Now, I shall write.

A Reason to Enjoy Monday! (Well, for one person, anyway.)

So it’s the 4th of April, folks. Normally, this wouldn’t be a particularly auspicious day in my calendar (despite it being the day when John Tesh married Connie Selleca back in 1992—’cause seriously, who can forget that?), but today’s a good day for one of my blog readers, ‘cause I’m giving away some books in celebration of Carolina Valdez Miller’s agent signing!

In case you’d forgotten, I’m giving away copies of the following:

Stephen King’s On Writing

Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird

Ray Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing

I know. My generosity astounds even me. It’s shocking, sometimes.

I’ll take a minute while you recover from your shock.

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Good? Good. Let’s get this thing back on track, shall we? You’ll want to know the winner, then, I presume. Yes?

Well, okay then. I had a little chat with Random.org, and they assured me that their randomly-generated results were completely random and not at all fixed and utterly unreplicable (that may not actually be a word, fyi, but I think you know what I mean). But despite their protestations of randomage (and that’s REALLY not a word), I still think something screwy was going on. I’m not complaining though, ‘cause a longtime reader and erstwhile critiquer of mine is taking home the prizes.

“Who’s that?” I hear you asking. I’ll tell you.

Right after I go refill my beer.

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I’m back. *sips beer* *sighs*

Now I’m really back.

So the winner, good people (and here I’m making the assumption that you are good, and not notorious reprobates masquerading as upstanding blog citizens), is…

Nicole Ducleroir!

Let’s all give Nicole a round of applause for successfully buying off the Random.org number generator, shall we?

*applause*

*cheers*

This is, incidentally, also rather convenient for me, since I already have Nicole’s email address, and I forgot to tell everyone to leave me an address at which I could reach them, and was planning on bugging Carol for the email address of whoever won, since I presume she collected them for her contest, being generally much more organized in these things than I am. That would’ve been embarrassing.

Anyway, congratulations, Nicole! And thank you everyone for celebrating Carol’s agentry with all of us!

And now I’m off to finish my beer.

Cheers!