A shorty in the cathedral

Good News, everybody, I have a new story out.

Available from New Maps is their Spring 2023 issue and I have a really quite short story in it. 

It's been two years since my last publication and for a bit there I felt like I might have lost the mojo for this story writing lark so this feels good.

This is one of those daft ideas that sticks in your mind for ages and then, when you write it, turns out entirely different to how you'd imagined. I had intended mystery and action but instead it's gone a bit Canticle for Liebowitz meets Joyce Grenfell.

Still, I like it and I hope you do too.

Oh, and if you do, I also had one with these fine people in the Spring 2021 issue too. 

Like flippin' busses

 Why yes, it is a non-end of year post. How bizarre.

And in this case it is to crow mightily while also banging the drum for persistence.

You know that old line about you wait ages and then three busses turn up at once? Well it appears to hold true for writing of short fiction too. Looking back at my tracker I see that I had three acceptances at the start of 2021 and then absolutely nothing until now, when I've suddenly had another three. 

As an average, this is brilliant and better than I could have hoped or deserved. As encouragement to keep going during those dark days of last year it's of no use what so ever. It felt like I'd seen the best of my stuff out there and that what I had left was the dross. I'd surfed my luck as far as I could. On several occasions I considered the idea of looking for a different hobby and when volunteering for the recent Eastercon I very nearly didn't put down that I wrote as it felt like a self-aggrandisement. Which would have been a shame as I ended up on a very nice panel about writing groups.

The secret to this feast and famine appears to be persistence. The most obvious of this being the third acceptance which, according to Submission Grinder, I have submitted 34 times (!) before it being picked up.

Further to that, in both 2021 and 2022 I submitted over 80 times each, cycling through 15 stories, which, if nothing else, is an exercise in playing the odds where you eventually find the one editor who is having a moment of weakness.

What does this say about the world of short fiction publishing? That somewhere out in that wide world there absolutely is an editor who will pay you money for your story. But by no means will you find them quickly. All you can do is keep writing, keep submitting and never consider a story dead just because you've had a formal rejection from four markets on the bounce. Your story will find a home.

Oh, and, if you can, find yourself a supportive writing group. They can tell you a lot about your writing and the submission process but also a good one will keep you going through those many, many rejections.

2022: the year of hee haw

 Hello all.

It's been a quiet year, writing news wise, this year. 

I've been up to much, first holiday and first convention since the Covid stuff started, got Covid (mildly, I'm glad to say), got all eco-smug about electric cars, but when it comes to news to put in here, not so much.

I have, according to Submission Grinder, had my highest number of rejections ever but no acceptances. Considering that last year I had a barnstormer with multiple publications I think it is only reasonable to expect a dip but I'd have liked to have been able to report on something.

Hey, and indeed, ho. Hopefully one of the 'Held for consideration' notes I have will transform into something in the New Year but in the meantime I'll continue to plug away, not least because I'm still enjoying making up bobbins as a distraction from some of the crap in the world.

Also because I'd like to go to the Glasgow Worldcon in 2024 and say 'I write' and not feel like a total fraud doing so.

Anywho, one thing I can still do is put up one of my old stories by way of the traditional Christmas 'present'. This year it's a thing about gods and goddesses that was published back in 2015 that came out of one of the many excellently silly post-GSFWC pub conversations.

You can find Agnes here. Hope you like it.

2021: The year of the four emperors

 Merry Christmas, one and all!

I hope this December sees you fine and healthy after yet another year of pestilence and incompetently corrupt government. It's that time of year where people recap their writing successes and I jump on the bandwagon with my meagre offerings and a bit of free fiction.

But this year I have a surprising amount to shout about for I had four, count 'em, four, stories published this year. A phenomenal amount for me and I can't ever say thank you enough to those wonderful editors who picked my little stories.

First of all was Sacrificial Gasoline, published in New Maps in April. A story about incompetent and corrupt government, oddly enough, and it's interaction with climate change. It can be found here

The second appeared in the anthology A Quiet Afternoon 2 and is called Rab the Giant and the Problem Neighbour. It's a quieter piece about being a good neighbour and not jumping to conclusions and can be bought here

Third was Gentrification and the Dream House, published in KZine in June and available here

This one is my attempt at a proper portal fantasy, somewhat let down by the characters being in their forties and not their childhood.

Finally last month brought us Titanic Terrstructures, a fairly titanic book in it's own right and an anthology of stories set around ginormous SF structures. Mine also has Aunts and they can be found here

I am extremely happy about all of these and not a little shocked to see them all together like this. Sadly I'll not see this many in one go for a long while to come, if nothing else because my writing this year has been very bitty and inconsequential. I will blame it on a second year of pandemic based brain fog but abject laziness does have a part to play as well. Here's hoping that next year I can write more as I have a TV studio set thing I've been working on for ages I'd love to get out there and a thing about post-apocalyptic tablet that keeps gnawing at the back of my brain.

One thing I did mange to write was flash fiction in October, following the Glasgow Writer Circle prompts. The output from that can be found here if you didn't see it at the time here or on Twitter.

And now to the traditional Christmas gift of free fiction. This year I bring you Why did you leave your last employer? This was a story that got picked up for publishing last year, in 2020, but, due to the editor's politics not agreeing with mine, shall we say, I never pimped it. Unfortunate but I didn't feel happy directing people towards the magazine after some of the things the editor said.

Anyhoo, I now produce it here so you can see what it was. Hope you like it.

Life in the big House

 

I've got a new story out, yay! This one is in an anthology, Titanic Terastructures that can be found here, that is a set of stories all in some way related to ginormous SF thingumies of a Ringworld stylee. I am very much looking forward to reading this and seeing what huge and wondrous ideas people have written of.

As for my story, it is set in a place called The House which is a planet wide residence that has seen better days and is a 'living in the ruins' type of story. There may be quite a lot of dust but I hope you like it.

By way of a wee taster, I've put up a piece of flash fiction that I wrote a few years back that was my first visit to The House. Ever since then the setting has stuck in my head and keeps nagging me to write things about it. I've had a few goes at short stories and this is the most successful. Saying that, the idea keeps nagging me so there might be more.

The flash piece that created it all can be found here: The Oculus at the Edge of the Universe

***

As Amazon is not great at showing all authors, here is a TOC for the book:

Honeysuckle for Ashes / Christopher R. Muscato

You Too Shall Pass / Russell Nichols

Jack, the Medbot and the Giant in the Sky / Laurel Beckley

Bang / Craig Russell

Fundamentals of Search and Rescue / Jennifer R. Donohue

Mothership / M.R. Parsons

Broken Circle / Manda Benson

Memento Mori / Johannes Toivo Svensson

Ashes to Ashes Dust to Stardust / Wendy Nikel

Under the Graying Sea / Jonathan Sherwood

Tharsis Dilemma / Matthew Ross

The Moment / Dan Piponi

The Big House / Bunny McFadden

The Sensation of Drowning / Dennis Mombauer

The Long Road Home / Andrew Gudgel

A Singular Event in the Fourth Dimension / Andrea M. Pawley

And the House Did Watch Over All / Brian M. Milton

The Long Sleep to Tera Terra / Mark Kirkbride

The What-The Tree / Liam Hogan

Haunting House / Mike Morgan

Heavenstair / Al Onia

Antimatter Dreams / David Wright

Distraction / Regina Clarke

Podfall / Barend Nieuwstraten III

The Kamacite Cage / Richard de Silva

Land of Opportunity / Gustavo Bondoni

Recurring dreams and dusty attics

Proving that story publications are like busses, I've another new one for your perusal. This time it is a story of old childhood memories and how market forces affects them. Or something.

Anywho, you can find it in Kzine issue 30 and it is called Gentrification and the Dream House.

This one had an odd gestation in that it is based on a recurring dream I've had all my life. Child, student, adult, the same basic scenario cropped up of my travelling through narrow passages in old houses and, a couple of years back, it came to me again. Only this time the dream was an angry rant about modern consumerism ruining old stuff.  As I'm sure happens in your dreams all the time too.

Other than being a sign that I'm getting old this inspired me to try to write down the feelings I was getting from the dream and, eventually, it evolved into the published story. Initially there was a lot more of the dream, i.e. passages and  non-sequitur weirdness but thanks to the lovely and clever people at the Glasgow Science Fiction Writer's Circle that was (sadly) cut to let the story that it morphed into appear.

Also inspirational was the Old Fruitmarket in Glasgow which I went to while initially writing this and got distracted from the band looking at the ironwork. 

Now, while I have you here, not only is this out today, but, as previously mentioned, you can also find a story of mine in A Quiet Afternoon 2 which you can find here on pre-order, although the pdfs go out in only a few days time. 

And, since I've been having that sort of year which I promise this it the last of, a further reminder that back in April I also had a story out in New Maps which you can find here

I hope you enjoy and that the next time you're down the shops you consider the alternatives on offer and if you can get to them by a door half way up a wall.

Low risk reading for the win!

I have a new story coming out soon in a wee Canadian anthology called A Quiet Afternoon 2 and they've just opened their site for pre-orders. You can find it here

The anthology is a collection of relaxed stories ideal for a restful afternoon, something we could all do with these days. Apparently they had volume 1 out last year as a response to the pandemic and you can still find it on their website should you be in need of additional emergency sitting down.

My story is a partner to one I had published in Fireside back in December 2017 in that it features Rab the Giant again, this time having to deal with some problematic neighbours and his prejudices and assumptions. 

I like this one a lot and am very glad it's found a home, especially in something quite so suited to my interests of having a nice sit down and not getting wound up. Especially nice is that the publishers will make a donation to a local Canadian charity out of the proceeds so go on, look it up.

I hope you like it.

Special Glaswegian Offer: Due to the relaxed and Canadian nature of the anthology they asked me to tone down the language from it's Glaswegian default but if anyone wants to know how the original sounded I'm perfectly happy to come round your house and shout the obscenity at you from the street.