Middle Grade Horror

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A middle grade horror story of mine titled “Ghost Wolf” was accepted in an anthology back in January. Of course, the editor wanted to time the release with Halloween, so I’ve been waiting (patiently) all year. Then came the news that the release was flubbed, though not through the fault of the editor.

Anyway, the anthology is out there now and is called 15 Spooky Campfire Stories for Kids. My contribution has special meaning for me. I wrote the story for my oldest daughter’s Girl Scout troop. A lot of Girl Scout troops sing songs around the campfire while camping. My oldest daughter’s troop has always told spooky stories. That may or may not have been because on their first camping trip as 1st graders, I led off with the story, “I got ya where I want ya, and now I’m gonna eat ya!” It’s a classic. The troop even acted that story out as a skit at a later multi-troop camping trip.

“Ghost Wolf” begins with my scouts telling (what else) spooky stories around a campfire when they think an unnatural visitor arrives. The latter event, of course, has not happened during any of my troop’s camping trips, though it is loosely based on an experience I had when studying abroad in Freiburg, Germany after Junior year of high school.

In addition to adult fiction, I tend also to write at the level where my kids currently fall. When they were infants/toddlers, I wrote several picture book manuscripts. I haven’t gotten any of those published though. When my oldest aged into the middle grade range, I started writing at that level. I’ve written five middle grade short stories, and four have been published. I’m considering publishing these as my next collection.

I’ve also written a middle grade trilogy that has been reviewed by my critique group but is languishing since I haven’t had time to edit those manuscripts. I really want that to me my next project. Maybe I’ll get going on the middle grade short story collection and use that as a give away for (and motivation to finish) the middle grade trilogy.

If you have young ones at home (or are young at heart), check out 15 Spooky Campfire Stories for Kids.

Cover Reveal – New Short Story Collection

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I’m well behind on my quarterly updates. Truth be told, I haven’t written or submitted much this year; so I decided, instead of regurgitating the same excuses, I’ll do a recap at the end of the year.

I wasn’t completely ideal, however. I’ve been working on my next publication. It’s about a year later than expected, but I’m finally pleased to announce that my second short story collection will be released October 13 in paperback and eBook via Amazon. The eBook version is available for pre-order currently.

The collection is called Laughing in the Dark: Short Tales of Humor, Horror, and Travel. If you can’t guess, the stories are a mix of humor and horror, the latter just in time for Halloween. The former can be enjoyed anytime. Really, all the stories can be enjoyed anytime. Check out the cover.  My friend and fellow speculative fiction writer, Michelle McBeth, did an excellent job bringing my vision to life.

I’m proud of this collection. Many of the stories have been published here and there over the last 5-6 years, so it felt good to collect them all in one place. I hope people enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

3Q, 4Q, and 2024 Recap

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If you hadn’t noticed, I never got around to posting my stats from 3Q24.  It’s New Years Day, and for a change, I don’t have pressing work.  Playing a little catch up, below are my stats from the last two quarters and year end. 

3Q24

  • Words written = 247
  • Submissions = 20
  • Rejections = 18
  • Acceptances = 0
  • Shortlists = 0
  • Publications = 1
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

4Q24

  • Words written = 691
  • Submissions = 2
  • Rejections = 8
  • Acceptances = 0
  • Shortlists = 0
  • Publications = 0
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

2024

  • Words written = 9473
  • Submissions = 58
  • Rejections = 59
  • Acceptances = 2
  • Shortlists = 1
  • Publications = 3
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

Those are pretty sad, I know.  I only wrote one story in 2024, back in 1Q.  It was a doozy though.  After adding a little here and there to it throughout the year, it now clocks in at 8900 words.  It’s a humorous story in the style of Douglas Adams.  Early on, I decided it would be the anchor story for my next short story collection.  That, at least, is where my triumph for the year resides.  Instead of dwelling on the pathetic output (and not reaching any of my goals), I’ll focus on the positive.

My next collection is coming along nicely.  It’s a mix of comedy and horror short stories.  I’m pleased to announce its title – Laughing in the Dark: Short Tales of Humor, Horror, and Travel.  I already have the manuscript back from my editor, and I even have a rough cover. 

If you’ve been following my journey, then you’ll know I intended to release this collection in time for Halloween 2024.   Oops.  The time suck that was the day job this year wouldn’t allow that.  So now I’m taking my time and plan to release the collection in the run up to Halloween this year.  After reviewing the edits (again as time permits), I’ll need to finish revising and then format the sucker.  I have the format template ready to go.  It’ll be a simple cut and paste job and shouldn’t be too bad, having done it for my last collection in 2023.

Getting that published is the main goal for the year.  What else am I reaching for?  I normally set short story submission and rejection goals, but I’m a little disillusioned with that process at the moment.  Not to mention it’s another time suck.  The critique group that I participate in finished working through my three middle grade sci-fi manuscripts.  I’d like to work my way through revising those and then start the process of publishing them. 

I’d also like to simply find time to write.  I enjoy putting out short story collections but have used up much of my previously written material.  I have about 24k words worth of stories for a solid sci-fi collection and another 15K words worth of middle grade stories.  I’d like to work toward producing enough additional stories to beef both of those word counts up to a respectable 50k.

That was 2024 in a nutshell.  How’d you do, and what do you have on tap for 2025? 

2Q24 Update

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Another sad quarter of writing. Let’s dive into the numbers.

  • Words written = 335
  • Submissions = 20
  • Rejections = 22
  • Acceptances = 1
  • Shortlists = 1
  • Publications =0
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

Yep, that’s the fewest words I’ve written in a quarter since I started this writing journey in 2017. At least those went to two existing stories. Both are on the longer side. For one of those, I’m finishing up incorporating comments from my critique group. For the other, I added a little while editing the story in preparation of submitting it to my critique group.

The submissions and rejections are about normal these days. Can I get another 32 submissions per quarter the rest of the year to make my 100 submission goal? Though I’ve submitted that many numerous times, I doubt it. Twenty a quarter seems more realistic at this point.

I did have one acceptance and one shortlist this quarter. Unfortunately, the shortlist did not turn into an acceptance. One of those close-but-no-cigar scenarios that are often part of the short story writing biz. The acceptance was of a flash fiction piece by the Virginia Writers Club Journal, which will be out later this year. This is the first addition of the journal to include a dedicated flash fiction section.

What’s on tap for Q3? I’m still slowly working toward releasing my next short story collection. I was so much further along at this time last year. I do already have a tentative cover in the works, and I’ve been working on the non-story components (intro, acknowledgments, back matter). I need my critique group to provide comments on the story I mentioned above, which will be the anchor story for this collection. Then the manuscript is off to my editor. Then its reviewing those edits. Then its formatting. Then it’s more formatting after uploading it to KDP. In other words, I’m real close. *sigh*

I’d also like to attend more meetings of the Northern Virginia Writers Club. Other commitments have kept me away. I always feel invigorated after spending time with my local authors and would like to get back to that. I also hope my family’s vacation this quarter results in a good story idea. I usually get at least one out of these trips.

That’s it from me. What did you work on last quarter?

1Q24 Update

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What can I say about the first quarter of 2024, except that it’s over? That’s not true. Well, it’s true that the quarter is over, but there is plenty to say. The mid-Atlantic actually saw snow this year for a change. Of course, gone are the days of the office closing, so you can play a little in the snow and maybe write a little with a warm beverage in hand. With modern technology, as long as the power and internet are flowing, so should the work. Let’s look at my first quarter numbers anyway.

  • Words written = 8,203
  • Submissions = 16
  • Rejections = 11
  • Acceptances = 1
  • Shortlists = 0
  • Publications = 2
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

As always, it’s a mixed bag but the opposite of my usual mixed bag. Normally, my submissions and rejections are well on track to reach 100 for the year and my number of words written is sad. For 1Q24, I wrote more than I have in any first quarter since 2019, but my submissions are about 10-15 less than normal. I suspected my submissions would fall after taking a lot of stories out of circulation last year to include in my first short story collection, We’re Here to Help… Ourselves: Short Tales of Time, Space, Aliens, and Paperwork. 

The number of words written was encouraging. I finished The Hitchhiker’s Guide series of books last year and wanted to write a humorous sci fi story in that vein. I also wanted that story to be on the long side to anchor and fill out my next short story collection, which will consist of funny and terrifying tales (though not necessarily both at the same time).  Those 8200 words all went to the resulting story. I’m pleased with the outcome, and I hope others find it funny. Now I must decide if this collection is long enough at 49650 words, or if I should write one more story to put the collection over 50k words. 

I did reach my goal of one acceptance for the quarter, which was published right away. I wrote about the acceptance of “Fair Winds Travel” here and what that story meant to me. My other story published during the quarter, “Grenada Lake,” had been accepted just over a year prior. I wrote about that saga here. (For those paying attention, it’s the same link.) I don’t have anything scheduled to be published this quarter, but maybe I’ll get lucky with an acceptance soon.  

My goals for 2Q24 pretty much relate to my second short story collection. I need to decide whether to include one more short story and then write it if I do. Then I need to start the process I followed last year. First, hire an editor. The one I used last year is willing to work with me again. Once the manuscript is edited, I’ll need to format it, likely purchasing another pre-designed format, and locate another interesting graphic to use as a section break. Then it’s figuring out the cover design and uploading the manuscript to KDP to start working on the formatting issues… because there are always formatting issues.

That was my reverse mixed bag quarter of writing, submitting, and publishing. How did your first three months of 2024 work out?

A Double Feature

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I have a double feature for you this time. Double scoop? Double fantasy? However you prefer your doubles, it’s coming your way.

By the whim of the Fates, I have two short stories publishing within in a week. First up, on Valentine’s Day itself, February 14, “Fair Winds Travel” will be published in The Sprawl Mag. This magazine from north of the border states it is “is a (cyber-)feminist, anti-colonial speculative fiction, poetry, and visual art magazine focused on publishing perspectives that have historically been left out of canonical sci-fi and fantasy.”

I wrote “Fair Winds Travel” as a tribute to my paternal grandmother. She was my last grandparent and passed away in 2022. My family and I went down to Florida for one last big get together with my entire extended family. Unfortunately, we ended up catching COVID at Disney World on the way down and spent the entire time isolating in our one bedroom Airbnb. Despite feeling terrible, I cranked out “Fair Winds Travel” which is the name of a travel agency my grandma owned. Both she and the travel agency play a prominent role in the story.

Next up, on February 20, the READER BEWARE anthology finally publishes. I say finally because my story, “Grenada Lake,” was accepted over a year ago. Regardless, I am pleased the anthology is ready for release. From the editors: this is “a collection of super-chilling tales of teen horror. A little nostalgia and an ode to Stine, this anthology promises to keep you up at night.” My understanding is the stories in the anthology are supposed to invoke the ’80s and ’90s. My story fits in nicely as it’s about a group of teen scouts who find something unexpected while camping at Grenada Lake. It just so happens that I camped at a place called Grenada Lake as a scout in the ’90s. This story floated around awhile, so I am pleased it found the right home.

Maybe the theme here is a double dose of nostalgia. 

4Q23 Update and 2024 Goals

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Holy frijoles, it’s 2024! Looking back at my 2022 recap last year, I noticed two big differences. First, I’m barely on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter any more. Maybe a goal for 2024 is deciding on an alternative social medial platform. Second, I didn’t receive a hold request on NYE. That would have been amazing but probably unreasonable to expect two years in a row. Also, while that hold request turned into an acceptance, that publication was delayed and still hasn’t been released yet. It’s supposed to be issued this month. In the meantime, the full numbers for 4Q23 are below.

  • Words written = 3,475
  • Submissions = 20
  • Rejections = 19
  • Acceptances = 0
  • Shortlists = 0
  • Publications = 1
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

Those quarterly numbers are pretty ‘eh,’ except in one regard.

The submissions and rejections got me to my 2023 goals. That’s great but not the exception to my “eh” year.

The words written were terrible, so that wasn’t the exception. For the last several years, I’ve done NaNoWriMo, which has contributed a bunch of words to the fourth quarter. Not this year. I had a more significant project to finish.

Those 3500ish words represent one new 2300 word horror story, a few additional words to an existing story, and the first chapter of a new piece that I’m not sure where it is headed. All I know is it’s in the vein of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so it’s solidly sci fi comedy. I just finished that series, and it’s firmly wormed itself into my brain.

The sole publication is what redeemed this quarter because that was my first short story collection, We’re Here to Help Ourselves… Short Tales of Time, Space, Aliens, and Paperwork. More on that below. I debated counting that as 14 publications since the collection includes 14 short stories. In the end, I felt that was cheating and simply counted the collection as one publication… one super, awesome, fantastic publication!

Now, let’s look at how 2023 went down.

  • Words written = 11,168
  • Submissions = 106
  • Rejections = 111
  • Acceptances = 6
  • Shortlists = 1
  • Publications = 5
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 1

Again, the words written are terrible. That is my lowest in a year since I started tracking my writing. That is no where near the 36k goal I set. The number of submissions and rejections hit the mark. I aimed for 100 of both and made it. Looking back, I don’t see that I set a goal for number of acceptances, but presumably I would have gone with four. I met that, thankfully.

I was so/so on my larger goals. I made it through one editing pass in the final manuscript in my middle grade near future sci fi trilogy. I didn’t make it through another draft of the entire trilogy. However, I started something better. I joined a critique group that is working its way through those manuscripts. A goal for 2024 is to have the critique group finish reviewing all three (it’s already finished the first), and then I will do a massive edit of all three incorporating the collected comments.

More importantly, I published my first short story collection. That was the overarching goal for the entire year, and it took almost the entire year. I started the process in February and published around Thanksgiving. That was a lot of work, but I also had a lot of help.

Time to figure out what to aim for in 2024. Let’s start big. I’d like to publish a second short story collection. I already have the theme: humor and horror. I also already have about 40k words worth of stories to include. I’d like that to be 50k though, so the collection has some heft. I guess my first goal really should be to write another 10k words worth of material. Maybe that’s where this new story I’m working on will go.

Speaking of words, I’ll set those at 36k again for the year. Why not? I don’t plan to work on anything too long, so I would think 3k words a month is doable. Of course, I said that last year too.

I’ll also set my usual goal of 100 submissions and 100 rejections. I’ve consistently reached that goal, but this year may be more difficult. I took a lot of stories out of circulation with my first collection, and I’ll take even more out if I proceed with a second collection. Maybe that will motivate me to write more. More writing = more stories = more submissions.

That’s my 2024 in a nut shell. How did your writing adventure progress last year?

NaNoWriMo Fail but Still Winning

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For the past five years, I’ve participated in National Novel Writing Month and provided an update afterward. The first two years I worked on the same novel. That one has kind of died. I realized that I don’t have time currently to conduct the research necessary to do that manuscript justice. At the moment, it’s novella length. I may plug a few holes and leave it there. I actually pulled out the first chapter of that work as a standalone short story and submitted it to an anthology with a very specific theme that fit. The editor rejected it but said he liked it. He had simply decided to take the anthology in a even more specific direction that my story didn’t fit as well in.

Each of the next three years I wrote a manuscript in what turned out to be a middle grade near future sci fi trilogy. The critique group I joined this year just finished reviewing the first in that trilogy and provided a lot of valuable feedback. I’m hoping the group will get through the second and third manuscripts in 2024. That will put me in a good position to revise all three and get them edited and published in 2025.

For NaNoWriMo this year I intended to start a new, possibly YA sci fi trilogy. I already have the general idea for each of the three books. The plan was, beforehand, to map out the plot of the first one using one of the generally accepted story structures. That didn’t happen. Also, NaNoWriMo didn’t happen. I wrote a total of zero words in November.

I like NaNoWriMo. I like the structure and motivation it provides. It has been a useful and fruitful experience. It just wasn’t happening this year.

But all was not lost! I instead focused on publishing my first short story collection, We’re Here to Help… Ourselves: Short Tales of Time, Space, Aliens, and Paperwork. I enjoyed that experience too. I had the help of several great people to guide me along and the support of the Northern Virginia Writers Club. I’m thinking about releasing another collection in 2024. I certainly have the stories, and releasing another collection will keep my publishing momentum going while the critique group works on my middle grade trilogy.

That was my 2023 NaNoWriMo.  How’d yours go?

Sci Fi Short Story Collection Book Launch

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At long last, my collection of short stories, We’re Here to Help… Ourselves, is available in paperback and preorders for the ebook version, which will release December 2! (I managed to fix most (but not all) of the formatting issues.)

Publishing this collection was my most significant writing goal this year, and I’m pleased to have checked it off.  It took almost the entire year.  First, I had to compile the entire manuscript.  The collection has 14 short stories, but originally it had 16.  After presenting my first several possible title choices to the Norther Virginia Writers Club, one astute member (Darius Jones) suggested cutting the only two horror stories in the collection. (Everything else is sci fi.) That finalized the collection, but I still had to draft the introduction, acknowledgments, author blurb, and back matter. If I was going to have a professional editor work on this project, I wanted everything edited.

On March 4, I contracted with an editor. I had worked with this editor last year when I coordinated the 15th Anniversary Anthology of the Northern Virginia Writers Club. I knew the quality of his editing and how to work with this editor, so he seemed to be a logical choice. He worked a lot faster than I did. He sent me edits in sections, but I didn’t have time to review anything until he was finished with the entire manuscript.

Once the words were right, I worked on the other components of the interior. I bought an off the shelf format. It made life much simpler. I simply cut and paste my Word doc into this format. It took care of fonts, space, breaks, etc. Next, I bought a pack of divider designs on Etsy. I found one in a collection of maybe one hundred that looked sci fi-ish. Like with the text format, I simply copied the design I picked and inserted it in many of my stories as a divider between sections rather than use the ole three ellipses. I also bought a pack of 10 ISBNs.

Then it was time to stop avoiding the cover, and time was running out. I first intended to hire a designer but got cold feet. I was short on time and wasn’t confident that I could accurately describe what I was looking for in a cover. Luckily, at the Virginia Writers Club symposium this year, I attended a presentation on how to use the graphic design software Canva. At first, I attempted to create my own design. Realizing my limitations, I licensed a preexisting design. I next asked another Northern Virginia Writers Club member (and president), Michelle McBeth and her husband if they would tweak it. Both had experience with designing the covers for Michelle’s sci fi series. It was a fun process going back and forth tweaking details, and they knew what they were doing. The result was amazing. I love the cover.

The final step was figuring out Kindle Direct Publishing. It’s a three-step process, most of which is straight forward, consisting of entering information and making selections. However, formatting is a nightmare. You upload your manuscript, and KPD re-formats it to how it wants to. Invariably, some things change, some weird things. I went through seven additional versions of my manuscript fixing formatting issues. Some I caught using the KDP digital previewer; others where only caught after I ordered two separate printed proofs. Ordering those was another suggestion of Michelle’s, and a good one.

There you have it. A culmination of a year’s worth of work is now out there. Would I do it again? Yep. I have plenty of short stories and am already thinking about what the next collection should contain.