Southern Gothic Online

I've just posted the first entry in a new blog dedicated to the discussion of stories and poetry published at Southern Gothic Online.

Please stop by, check out the poem Sweet Panhandle Pie, and post your thoughts in the comments section.

Each story or poem will have it's own blog post for discussion, and each blog post will link back to the story or poem.

The Exception Disproves the Rule

File this under weirdest thing I've ever seen:

Biologists at the University of Manchester want help in cracking their "miracle" discovery of three fish inside a sealed egg. The group found the duck egg in a small pond on a field trip to the French Alps and noticed something moving inside it. When they cracked open the shell, three live minnows were inside.

My Nipples Explode with Delight

First, "Even Angels Fall" is going to be published in the October edition of Eclectica. It's a story set in heaven... or is it hell?... I never can remember. Eclectica says,

Pushcart Prize, National Poetry Series, and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as Nebula Award nominees, have shared issues with previously unpublished authors.

Also of note,

In general, few simultaneous submissions have ended up appearing in Eclectica. Since we tend to read submissions in batches and not as they trickle in, a high quality submission is likely to have been accepted elsewhere before we get to it, and if the piece in question wasn't strong enough to be accepted elsewhere by the time we DO get to it, it's probably not going to be what we're looking for, either. There have been exceptions, though, so it's really up to the writer.

"Even Angels Fall" is one of the exceptions. It was sent out to two other magazines. Also of note, this story was rejected by Oxford American, Yale Review, Paris Review, Missouri Review, and Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, before being accepted by Eclectica.

Like they say, you can't win if you don't play.

Second, "Adam's Hot Dogs at the End of the World" is going to be published in Futures - the limited-run sci-fi feature of Nature. My story will finish up a series which last year was named Best Science Fiction Publisher by the European Science Fiction Society. According to the guidelines,

...given that interest is large and space is limited, competition for space will be fierce and rejection rates very high indeed.

It's Nature, man! The magazine that published the frigging human genome. Been around since Darwin, ok? So this is, like, completely and totally huge, ya know?

This story was rejected by Baen's Universe, Strange Horizons, and Farthing.

You may have begun to notice a trend, begun here and here. Yes, four of the five stories I've sold this year are about the end of the world. I don't know why, why these stories and damned few others seem to be attracting the attention of editors. Maybe I'm tapping into some global psychic current of apprehension. It's so weird, on this, like, metaphysical level or something. I'm totally freaked out about it.

Harvest My Heart

"Harvest My Heart" has just been published by Pindeldyboz.com. This is the third story of mine to appear at the hippest literary zine on the web, and one which I am a bit proud to see in print... so to speak.

I started this story in 2001, when I wrote the title and first 300 words one afternoon. Then I forgot I had written it until I found it one day while cleaning files off my computer. I couldn't remember where I was going with the story, but I thought it made an interest bit of flash fiction, so I sent it to Vestal Review, where it was rejected.

Since then, it has been rejected by Glimmertrain, The Pedestal, Raven Electrick, From the Asylum, and Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens.

Each time it was rejected, I tweaked it a bit. The slush editor at Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Michael Smith, worked with me a bit on the story, suggesting that I make it longer, for one thing, but in the end it was rejected for various reasons, including the fact that it didn't meet their 2,000 word minimum requirment.

So I sent it to Pindeldyboz. And waited. And waited. And about 4 months later, it was accepted for publication, and now it's published, so please go read it, and then write to editors and tell them that it's the Best Story Evah!