Salvage
I’m delighted to announce that my second short story to be sold to a pro-paying market has just appeared in the winter issue of Deep Magic!
“Salvage” is a rather different story from my last. It’s what my wife calls “your dark sci-fi.” As in, “you should work on your dark sci-fi.” Which she says whenever I complain of slow going in one of my other writing projects. She wants me to turn it into a novel. But getting it out there as a novelette in Deep Magic is pretty danged cool.
For that matter, Deep Magic is pretty danged cool. They’re an electronic magazine devoted to clean SF&F. Clean doesn’t mean puerile, or pedantic, or preachy, by the way — did I mention this was my “dark” story? They also have sky-high production values, pro editing, and pay their authors professional rates. Check ‘em out! They have a print anthology out soon. And, of course, you can pick up the Winter issue now for just three bucks. And it’s free on Kindle Unlimited! What are you waiting for?
Repped!
I am delighted to announce that I am now represented by the amazing, insightful, and energetic Carrie Pestritto of Prospect Agency!
I’m super excited to have an agent, as you can imagine, but even more so to work with Carrie. We had a short discussion on the phone about revisions, and I could immediately see that she had identified an area where the story could be made so much better. That was enough to get me excited about the story all over again. Fortunately I was able to get the revisions started to her satisfaction, and she officially offered. I signed the agreement today.
This feels rather unreal, and I’m still gripped by imposter syndrome (doubly so, since I’ve been doing job interviews these last couple weeks, in the midst of talking to agents and trying to implement as many of Carrie’s excellent revisions notes as possible), but the evidence suggests that the above announcement is true, so . . . there you have it!
I think this is a good time and place for a Kermit GIF.
The Battaile of the Mudde
My first pro story, “The Battaile of the Mudde,” is now available from Escape Pod! You can read it or listen to it for free at http://escapepod.org/2016/11/10/ep549-the-battaile-of-the-mudde/. (Thanks to J. J. Campanella for his spirited narration!)
I had a blast writing this story, and I’m delighted by the reception it’s gotten in the Escape Pod forums, including a couple people saying they’d like to see further adventures from these characters. No current plans for that, but it’s nice to know the story and humor landed successfully.
First Professional Sale!
So I recently signed the contract for my first professional sale, a short story to Escape Pod.
I’m pretty excited. This is a real publication credit — Escape Pod is an SFWA-qualifying market — and that’s exciting enough. But what makes Escape Pod unique is that the stories are released not only on the web site, but also as a recorded podcast.
That’s right: someone’s going to read my story. The narrators are always very good, too. I’ve enjoyed many of Escape Pod’s tales on my daily commute since discovering them a couple months ago. Some stories are new and never before published, like my two favorites so far, John Markley’s Among the Living and David John Baker’s The Hunter Captain. Other stories are reprints, or classics given wonderful readings, like Theodore Sturgeon’s The Man Who Lost the Sea and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.
That’s some pretty crazy company for my little story to keep.