Meanwhile…

New story up! “Stragglers,” a dramatic piece of crime fiction, is up over at the excellent 10Flash. I’m pretty happy with this piece. Check it out and let me (and superstar editor KC Ball) know what you think by leaving a comment over there (and here, too, of course, if you want).

Make sure you check out the other stories as well. There are some great authors featured there.

Speaking of KC, she’s got an awesome piece of crime fiction of her own up today over at Every Day Fiction.

My short story, “Big in Ak-Sar-Ben,” in which a stalwart scientist battles giant monsters with math, has been accepted by Big Pulp. I’ll post more when it comes out in October! That’s a story I’m pretty happy with. It was hard to sit on it, waiting for Big Pulp’s submission period. But the patience paid off.

I managed to pull off the nigh impossible – well, okay, perhaps it was only the slightly difficult, or even moderatedly challenging – task of winning the writing group’s July contest. I wrote the last piece with about 25 minutes to spare. I may have a couple of publishable works out of it, actually; maybe I should just be dashing things off without putting so much thought into them. Maybe I’m overthinking things. For first drafts, anyway. I would post an excerpt but I don’t have them handy.

Also on the to-do list: send in submissions for the Norton Anthology Hint Fiction contest. I’ve got one ready to go, and ideas for a couple more. Competition will be fierce!

Best of all, I think I have a solid piece that I can send to 10Flash. Once it’s been through the ringer at the writing group I’ll send it in.

I just noticed that my steampunkish story “Four Liars” is live over at the premier issue of 10Flash. Check it out and let me know what you think, over there or here.

There are some other awesome writers featured there as well, including Jordan, Gay, and Erin, so you should find something you like. I need to check them all out myself.

Steampunk story “The Four Liars” accepted! Look out for it in the premier of 10Flash in July. I will, of course, post a notice when the issue is up. Exciting! I’ll be featured along with some really great writers who should be familiar names by now, including Gay “L&O” Degani and Erin “Babymamma” Kinch.

I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll save further discussion of the story for after it’s out.

For the past few weeks I’ve been struggling with a story for 10Flash, an exciting new market that’s opening up soon. I was invited by the editor to submit something, which is extremely flattering. I don’t want to disappoint!

Each issue of 10Flash is themed. In the premier issue we are all writing about librarians on vacation in an exotic land. It’s a great prompt to work with, and opens up huge possibilities.

I originally, as I even hinted at here on the blog somewhere, came up with a story about a Greek librarian visiting Atlantis. Basically the idea was that they would show him this amazing library full of every book imagined, even books from the future. But in the end he’s disappointed because it’s all on computers instead of actual paper.

It was a cute idea, but kind of cliche, I think, and I was having a hard time coming up with a way to make it an interesting story and not just a joke.

I’m happy to say that last night I came up with something way better (triggered by a random Twitter post, incidentally), so I’m trashing the Atlantis idea. I do want to eventually do some underwater Atlantis stories. There is something about the concept that fascinates me. But, really, is Atlantis going anywhere? The underseas kingdoms can wait.

The new story is, I think, much better. There are some steampunk elements, which is an aesthetic I love, and I’ve done some pretty fun research to really bring the story to life. I’m hoping to finish it up today and get a crit or two of it from the Writer’s Ink crew next week before submitting.

It seems a waste to just toss these couple of paragraphs, so here it is, the aborted Atlantean Library story. You can probably tell I was really struggling and couldn’t get into it. The idea was that he’d been taken to sea by this shifty merchant and tossed overboard, but I cut his interactions with the ship’s captain as I realized I probably wouldn’t have space for that. Easier to just toss in a line of dialogue explaining it later. As he’s drowning (which I didn’t convey very well at all), the Atlanteans slow down time and come rescue him.

I still kind of like the concept of this beginning, so maybe I’ll use the idea in another story sometime.

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