Mid-June Goal Check

Umm... Okay. So, this is a bit of a surprise.

After having been in the doldrums much of the year to date, I've hit my stride this month and have made serious progress on not just my June goals but my yearly goals as well!

1. Make 20 non-reprint submissions of short stories. - DONE! I've gotten 22 non-reprint submissions out the door.
2. Submit one backlog story for each full week in June. - On track, 2-for-2! Not only that, but I've gotten FIVE backlog stories total out the door so far. So even if I didn't meet my defined goal (by failing to submit a backlog story this week or next week) I'd still have met the big picture goal.
3. Write at least one story. - DONE! In fact, I've gotten two new stories written this month. They're both flash and one of them isn't quite submission-ready yet, but I'm still pleased with this. I've also put a couple thousand words on a longer story that I don't feel like I quite have my hands around yet.
4. Read at least 30 short stories. - On track! At 19 for the month so far.
5. Reply to all Kazka Press submissions by June 23rd. - On track! I've read all the submissions which had come in as of last weekend and will be doing more reading early this week.

I also got the "A Fatal Error" ebook designed and published this week and did a handful of reprint submissions. I'm not quite sure what flipped my "getting stuff out the door" switch to ON but I'll take it!

A Fatal Error Released on Amazon

It's been almost a year since I published "Write Every Day" and during that time I haven't released anything new for the Kindle. As of yesterday, that changed with the release of the first of my Chip Rawley baseball mysteries, "A Fatal Error." This is a novelette, just under 9000 words or about 30 pages if you prefer to think of lengths in those terms.

Chip Rawley is a former professional baseball player who never quite made it to the big leagues. Staying close to the game, he became a trusted confidant of Branson Waters, the owner of a major league team. In "A Fatal Error" Rawley investigates the death of Mark Feist, whose botched catch kept his team out of the World Series.

If you read "A Fatal Error", I hope that you enjoy it!

Columbus-Area Folks: June 8, 2013 Sidekicks! Reading at Whetstone Library

This Saturday (June 8th, 2013) I'll be reading my story "Learning the Game" from the Sidekicks! anthology at the Whetstone Library in Columbus, Ohio. There will also be readings by Stephen Lickman, Matt Betts, and K. W. Taylor. And the anthology's editor, Sarah Hans, will be in attendance along with its publisher Steven Saus. All in all, it will be quite the sidekick-y hootenanny.

The event is from 5-7 PM. The library will be closed to new entrants at 6 PM, so if you want to come, arrive before that time. The readings will probably be mostly done by 6 PM, as the second hour is intended to be mostly Q&A time with the audience and the authors/editor/publisher.

The event is free to attend and if you bring your copy of Sidekicks! I'll be happy to sign it for you (as would be the others involved). However, we can't sell the books at the event, so if you don't already have a copy you could either order it right now off Amazon or contact me and we'll work something out.

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Kazka Press June Issue Released

The June issue of Kazka Press has been released. My editorial introducing the stories (and introducing our themes for the upcoming months) is included below.

May Goal-Check and June Goal-Setting

The year is almost half-over. Toward the end of this month I'll look at my progress on my 2013 goals overall. (Spoiler Alert: It's not gonna be pretty.)

For now, though, I'm going to focus on the month that just ended and the month that's beginning.

Here were my May goals:

1. Make 15 non-reprint submissions of short stories. - Got it. In fact, I surpassed it with a total of 20 submissions.
2. Write at least one story of more than 1000 words. - Done.
3. Submit at least one story for the first time. - Done.
4. Reply to all Kazka Press submissions by May 25th. - I came up a bit short... err... long on this. I made all my first-round decisions by the 25th but didn't make final cuts until the 27th. Since we try to put issues out on the 1st, that really put the publisher in a time crunch. So I'm going to aim to be better about this in June.

Speaking of June. Let's have some goals!

1. Make 20 non-reprint submissions of short stories.
2. Submit one backlog story for each full week in June. - If I do this, I'll get four of the stories out of my "backlog" of drafted-but-not-finished stories out the door.
3. Write at least one story. - Writing new fiction isn't going to be my main objective this month, but I do want to meet my Write 1/Sub 1 monthly goal.
   
4. Read at least 30 short stories.
5. Reply to all Kazka Press submissions by June 23rd.

French Translation of "Twenty-Seven Rules for Coping"

Those who read French might be interested in the newly-released edition of the long-standing dark fantasy anthology Ténèbres which contains a translation of my story "Twenty-Seven Rules for Coping." Thanks to the fine folks at Goldfish Grimm's Spicy Fiction Sushi for giving the story its initial publication and to Dreampress for selecting it for this year's Ténèbres.

I received my contributor's copy today and was quite pleased to hold this, my first foreign-language translation, in my hands. Even if I can't read my own story!

"An Alien Named Tim" Live at Nature

My science fiction short story "An Alien Named Tim" is live now at Nature. This is my second time appearing in Nature. I originally wrote this story for one of Liberty Hall's weekly flash fiction competitions; it's my first sale from the stories I've written there.

If you read "Private Memories" earlier this week and want something a bit lighter, this should fit the bill.