Wednesday, August 14, 2013

An Acceptance

I just got an acceptance letter from Bards & Sages Quarterly.
WHOOP! WHOOP!
Is it still cool to whoop, whoop? I don't know anymore, at 34 I am starting to find I am past the age of knowing what is cool.
Hmmm…
Better question. Was it ever cool to whoop, whoop?
I'll have to look into that…anyway, its time for a short story update.
First, I will have a story in the January 2014 issue of Bards & Sages. The last couple of years it would have been kind of depressing to get my first story accepted in August. But this year I did not write my first short story until July so an acceptance letter a month later is actually pretty good.
With my limited writing time this year with the babies and school I have been working on novels whenever I get a chance to write. But we were on vacation for the 4th of July and the urge struck me one night in the hotel room and by the time we got home I had two short stories in need of editing (which took me another few weeks). The story still in submission was over 8,000 words long, by far my longest short story.
I tried to approach the idea for that one like I would a novel, which was something new for me. The last year or so I have been using a loose outline for novels and discovery writing short stories. We'll see how this works. For me, short stories are always more about experimenting with different styles and techniques than the actually story. It was nice to play around a little with a couple of different styles.
Finally, for those of you wondering, yes; I still have a story I wrote for the last PHP shoot out in submissions somewhere too. I just received a 249 day rejection, did an edit and found a new place. I have to admit I was getting a little antsy for a reply on that one.
I started this blog to give updates on my writing, both shorts and novels, and it is nice to actually have something to report other than "I wrote another chapter this week" or "I am still working on my novel". Maybe I should write more short stories.