Short Story Sale: "Scraps" to Daily Science Fiction

I received word earlier today that Daily Science Fiction has accepted my story "Scraps" for publication. I'm very excited about this for a number of reasons.

One is that I feel like "Scraps" is among the best of my stories so far and I'm thrilled that it will be seeing publication. This is a story which literally kept me up at night. I wrote about half of it late one evening and was so tired that I thought I'd have to finish it in the morning. But after 45 minutes or so of tossing and turning (and occasionally sending myself an email from my phone so I wouldn't forget some detail I wanted to add to the story "in the morning") I finally conceded to the story's pull. I got back out of bed and wrote the rest of it. The muse satisfied, I then slept well (if for a briefer time than I might have liked).

Also, the venue is one that I'm really excited to be published by. DSF is among the first places I started submitting stories to when I returned to writing last year and it's nice to "crack" the market in that sense. Plus, the story will get broad exposure when it's released. (If you're not familiar with DSF, they are a SFWA-qualifying professional short fiction market which publishes a story every day Monday through Friday. The stories go out by email and then are posted on their website a week later.)

Finally, there is the previously-mentioned SFWA-qualifying aspect. This makes two of the three sales I will need to be able to become an Active member of SFWA. Since that's something I literally first contemplated wanting to achieve over 20 years ago, reaching that point will be quite a life achievement.

The acceptance was easily one of the most exciting writing-related emails I've received. I look forward to sharing the story with you when it's released. (No dates available yet, but I expect Fall 2012 based on what I understand their usual lead times to be.)

Lastly, I want to thank all of the people who helped critique this story: Leah Cypess, Alex Shvartsman, Brenda Stokes Barron, Robert Lowell Russell, Kelly Stiles, Greg Wachausen, and Ronald Ferguson. Each of your input was valued.