IWSG - A Different Sort of Insecurity & Links

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, created by Alex J. Cavanaugh. For more information, or to join (all are welcome!), go HERE.

While I'm still filled with all the usual insecurities, I'm too excited to come up with them right now. This weekend, I got a short story accepted for an anthology I was really hoping to get into. Not only was it a fun (in a horror manner of speaking) collection, but it's also my first pro-pay sale.

Unfortunately, I can't post what it is specifically (or the cover, which I already have), because I'm not sure if the publisher wants us to just yet, but soon! It will appear on my Publications tab as soon as I have more information.

I also got the cover and tentative publication date for a book I placed a flash fiction piece in last month. I love seeing the covers! It's in the Top 3:

1. Getting the acceptance
2. Getting the book/magazine/e-mag/e-book in my grubby little hands
3. Seeing the cover for the first time!

Since I usually do a [Mostly] Wordless Wednesday image post, here's the cover of the acceptance I got last month:

This one is a kid-friendly publication, in case you can't tell from the cover. I'll be in Volume 2, Issue 2, releasing in April 2016. I only know what the cover (and some of the illustrations) look like because of the Indiegogo campaign they're doing to try to get up to a pro-paying market.

Actually, I do have an insecurity to discuss today that has to do with acceptances and publication. Even when I get an acceptance, it doesn't magically stop the insecurity I feel. All of a sudden, my insecurity isn't that an editor won't like my story, but that now that it's published, the people reading it will hate it. What if someone buys that magazine because I'm in (say, my friends and family), and they read my story and think, "How did she get this published?" They'd never tell me, so how do I know if they actually like it? Of course they're going to tell me they like it! (Or just not say anything.)

So, yeah, even acceptances come with their share of insecurity. There's plenty more where that came from, but how about just the one today?

Those of you who have visited before know I do a recap of my submissions each month for the IWSG to keep myself accountable, and to give a look into what it's like to be an author submitting short stories to markets. If it's something you're looking to do, but you have questions, ask away! It gets easier once you jump in.

In August:

I submitted 4 pieces (lower than usual number, because I've got several submissions out to markets that take a longer time to turn them around)
I got 3 rejections (again, lower number than usual)
I got 1 acceptance (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!)
I got 1 new piece revised and submitted for the first time
I currently have 12 pieces on submission
Since I began submitting a little over a year ago, I have received a total of 68 rejections and 10 acceptances.

Apparently, you're a success once you get to 100 rejections, so I've got a bit longer to go. ;)

I also post publication links each Wednesday. Note: I have not researched these links and do not endorse them. I merely pass them along. Always do your own due diligence before submitting to a publication or contest.

Accepting Submissions:

Weird City is accepting submissions for their inaugural issue. 1500-7500 words. Pays 1.25 cents per word. Deadline September 30.

Imaginate accepts stories based on their photo prompts and themes. Current theme is Weather, for the December issue. Short stories, flash fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. They also take photo submissions for their covers. Pays $.05/word. Length requirements vary per submission type. Current deadline is October 1.

Guardbridge Books is taking submissions for Myriad Lands: An Anthology of Non-Western Fantasy. They want fantasy that is not based on Medieval Europe. 1000-6000 words. Pays approximately $.05/word. Deadline October 1.

Cantina Publishing is taking submissions for Untethered: A Magic iPhone Anthology. 3000-7000 words. Pays $100. Deadline October 1.

The Tishman Review is always open to submissions. Short fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and book reviews. Word limits vary per submissions type. Payment is between $10 and $75.

Manor House is currently open to submissions of dark fantasy and horror. 2000-7000 words. Pays a flat fee of $20.

Tales to Go is seeking travel stories that deal with unfamiliarity and seeing the world from a different view. They prefer 1000-3000 words, but set no hard limits. Pays $50.

Contests:

Brilliant Flash Fiction is holding a Freestyle Writing Competition. No entry fee. 600 word limit. Cash prizes. Deadline September 15.

The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award is taking entries. 6000 words or less. No entry fee. Cash prize. You have to have had something published in the UK and Ireland, but you do not have to be a resident. Deadline September 24.

Fiction Vortex is holding their Serial Box Contest. This sounds interesting. Grand prize winner gets to control their "serial box," earning royalties from the other pieces allowed in and having control over which ones get in. This should be episodic/serial. Limit 3500 words. Speculative fiction. Grand prize winner also gets a $300 prize. Deadline October 5.

P.S. I'm co-hosting the IWSG next month. See you then!

Any of these of interest? Anything to share? Publication news? Rejection news? What are you insecure about? Do you still feel insecure once you get a piece accepted? What is your Top 3 of the fun parts of getting published?

May you find your Muse.

Acceptance

Today's going to be a short post since I just burned all of my writing time getting some non-writing work finished. Ah well, it needed to be done. And I'll have plenty of writing time next weekend since I get to go up to Estes Park and have a writing retreat weekend. Woot!

I figured for today I could share some good news. Last week I got two acceptances. I placed a memoir flash fiction piece with Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things, and I placed a short horror story with Sanitarium Magazine. The emails came two days in a row.

PSA: One of my acceptances showed up in the spam folder. Be sure to check your spam folders regularly! If it weren't for the fact that I check daily, I might have missed the opportunity.

Sanitarium will be released at the end of this month in both paper and e-magazine format. I don't have a release date for Ember yet, but it will be a fully illustrated hardcover book. I'll share each when they're available (and will update my publications tab with purchase links.)

Sanitarium has an interesting model. They're just now switching things to it. Each week, their subscribers get a mini-issue that they can access online. At the end of the month, each mini-issue is combined into the monthly full magazine, which they then get via their preferred means. So I already got to see my short story in the subscriber mini-issue, and now I'll get to hold a hard copy in my grubby little hands (remember the discussion last Monday?) I'm excited that I'll be getting a hard copy of each of these publications!

Do you have any good news to share? How is your summer writing time going? Are you actively submitting? Are you waiting to hear on any submissions?

May you find your Muse.

Cheerleader image by Vickey, clker.com

Pestilent Punctuation

I'm a grammar nazi. This isn't a fact I try to hide. Though I don't bust it out unless it's for my critique group or my own writing (so, no, I do not go around correcting people on Facebook, for instance). I went to the library this week to see if they had any of the books from the best horror novels I'm reading through and reviewing every other Friday. The travesty that was the horror selection at the library is a post for another day, but I did end up finding a Cormac McCarthy book, Blood Meridian. I'd been curious about him for awhile, so I decided to pick it up in addition to the ONE book from the horror list I found that I hadn't yet read (a Ray Bradbury).

Judging by my title, you can maybe tell where this is going, at least if you've read him. Maybe you're nodding? Maybe it's just me.

The man has his own system of punctuation. Specifically, he doesn't use quotation marks to set apart dialogue. He also doesn't use apostrophes in most cases. I found that he randomly used them. For instance, "ain't" had an apostrophe. Yet I'm pretty sure "aint" isn't a different word, so if you want to avoid confusion why put an apostrophe there, but not in "wont/won't?" "Wont" without an apostrophe is still an actual word with a completely different meaning. So if you don't put an apostrophe, you've just written the wrong word.

Argh.

He also has a very stream of consciousness way of writing. I realized partway through a sentence that it had been going for quite awhile already. It actually ended up taking all of one page and part of another. In a hardcover. A single sentence that was more than one page long.

Blink, blink.

And, yes, it distracted me. It was working at first, but it pulled me out of the story when I realized it had been going on and on and on. Still, the fact that I made it as far as I did means his writing was flowing, despite the run-on sentence from Hades. That's the thing about his writing. If he weren't a good writer, it would be downright unreadable. Instead, you're lulled into continuing, muscling through. His flow and pacing work well. His descriptions are engrossing.

While he is a good writer, painting a picture with his words, I'm finding his writing style distracting. My poor little grammar nazi writer's soul is twitching inside me as I read on. Out of curiosity, I went to Amazon to look at what reviewers had to say. First of all, with 984 reviews, he's at 4 stars. Impressive. Or not? I don't know. Feels impressive to me for someone who has gone so far out of the mainstream rules of writing.

Anyway, I made it through five pages of reviews before anyone mentioned his lack of correct punctuation. Did they all know about it ahead of time? Does it really just not bother people?

In fact, the biggest technical complaint was about the vocabulary. The biggest non-technical complaint was about the violence. A lot of people took issue with the "pompous," "obscure," or "pretentious" vocabulary. Several of them said he did it on purpose to prove how smart he was. In fact, people repeatedly said they had to pull out a dictionary to finish reading it. I'm not that far in yet, maybe about 80 pages, but I have not had this issue. And not because I'm brilliant. I've got an okay vocabulary from being an avid reader, but it sounded from these reviews like every other word was twenty syllables.

But those same people had no issue with the screwed up punctuation?

Blink, blink. (Again.)

The thing is, I'm not having a terribly hard time figuring out when someone's talking. For the most part, it's quite clear. Yet it does pull me out of the story. I did notice that it gives a different feel to the book, changes the voice and tone some, which I find interesting. I want to continue examining that effect.

It makes me wonder, though, how he got published in the first place? I look at how regimented submission guidelines can be, and wonder just how someone gets their start when, from what I've been told, he does this in all his books. What editor took that gamble in the first place? What reader said, "I like this," and spread the word? How did his editor/agent get past the first page this occurred on and not give up, when we're told these days that mistakes on the first page mean they're not going to keep reading?

In other words, what's up with this?

I can see a well known author getting away with it after he's become well known and respected, but I really want to know how this happened in the beginning. When someone is given a chance despite breaking the rules, I want to know more.

Also, side note: Did they really use "ye" in the Old West? Because his characters are doing that. And I'm curious.

There's no big point to this post except that I wanted to talk about it, I guess. I'm curious how something like this begins, what the writer is thinking, what the editor was thinking, and just WHY? And I'm also curious as to why it doesn't bother more people. I get that I may be more bothered by something like this than most people, but I'd think it would irk anyone who is accustomed to reading, oh, I don't know, proper punctuation!? (<----totally not proper punctuation, but this is a blog post, not a novel, and I claim blog-etic license.)

Have you read a Cormac McCarthy? Did the weird punctuation bother you? Did you feel it changed and/or improved the tone of the book? Do you know of another author who does the same thing?

May you find your Muse.

Quotation images from Mohamed Ibrahim, clker.com
Confused Squirrel image by Kelly, clker.com

[Mostly] Wordless Wednesday - Cannibal Tomato & Links

So...my [Mostly] Wordless Wednesday photo is [Mostly] weird.

See, we put our tomatoes in the window to ripen, and one of them got forgotten, but rather than just get all mushy and rotten, this one apparently started reproducing and cannibalizing itself.

I don't know how well you can see these, but in the first one, the tomato is sprouting like crazy...from the inside!! And in the second one, you can see an entire root system within the tomato.

Am I the only one who's never seen anything like this before?! We're going to plant it, possibly after slicing the bottom open to let the roots free, and see what happens.

By the way, this one was store-bought, and is not a GMO product. I sort of want to cut it open and see what it looks like, but then we can't plant it. Or can we?

Now for some links.

Please bear in mind that I am not personally vetting any of these publications. I haven't researched the validity of these offers. Please due your own due diligence before submitting to any publication.

Accepting Submissions:

The New Ohio Review is currently in their open submissions window. This one closes December 15, then is open again from January 15 to April 1. Paying market. Literary market for prose and poetry.

Picayune Literary Magazine is taking submissions through December 15 of short or flash fiction, poetry, black and white photography, and black-line art. Pays with one contributor copy.

The Lindenwood Review is taking submissions through December 15. Accepts fiction, poetry, and essay. Pays in a contributor copy.

Strange Musings Press is seeking romantic stories that make you laugh. They can be any genre, as long as they involve a romance and are humorous. Deadline is December 30. Pays in royalties and an e-book copy.

The Apalachee Review is always open for submissions. Fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Pays two contributor copies.

Puritan Magazine is always open for submissions of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, interviews, and reviews. Paying market (pay differs per type of submission).

Martinus Publishing has a variety of anthologies taking submissions right now, with varying deadlines. The topics include: Veterans of Future Wars (December 31 deadline, pays in royalties); Altered America (December 31 deadline, pays in royalties); Life of the Dead (open until filled, pays in royalties); We Were Heroes (opens December 1, pays in royalties); To Hell With Dante (opens December 1, pays in royalties).

Of Interest:

Speaking of accepting submissions, here's a list of the "Hottest, Newest Lit Mags (Begun in 2012 or 2013)." This list was put together by The Review Review.

This one's been going around a lot lately, but in case you haven't seen it, here's a map of the Most Famous Book Set in Each State, presented by the Business Insider.

Any of these of interest to you? Any submission/publishing news? Anything we should know? Have you ever seen a tomato do this? Did any of the books catch you by surprise? How many did you guess?

May you find Your Muse.