Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Shoot-Out Story Published

I’ve been talking about the latest PHP writer’s shoot-out over the past couple of weeks. These are just short story competitions that we have at Pill Hill Press, the rules change with whoever is hosting the event and some are competitions while others are more like writing workshops. No matter what the format they are always fun.

Anyway the time before this one I wrote a story called The Terrifying Legend of Jim, it was a horror story but one written with my own odd sense of humor. The result was what could only be called a horror parody. It got very good reviews during the shoot out. I shopped it around a few places and got some very complimentary rejection letters. Which is kind of a weird thing to say, but when a pro-paying magazine that you really, really want to get in, that usually only sends out form rejections, sends you a personal rejection that says they like your writing but the humor of the story didn’t quite fit the magazine and then they go into a few specifics about what they think would make the story stronger for another market, well that is pretty exciting.

But all I was getting was rejections and then my wife, editor in chief of Pill Hill Press, told me that Shane McKenzie(one of the other participants in the shoot-out) would like the story for an anthology he was editing for Pill Hill Press. When we first started PHP we published a few of our stories to fill in when someone didn’t provide a contract in time, but we try not to publish our stuff.

I made an exception for this when I heard that my short little story was part of what gave Shane the idea to do the anthology. The fact that I had (partially) inspired someone to…well do anything really, with my writing was a huge ego boost and I sent it off right away. Well the book is out!



If you are interested in fun horror parodies pick up a copy of It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

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