"What Fates Impose" from Alliteration Ink

Alliteration Ink, the publisher of the Sidekicks! anthology which includes my story "Learning the Game", has a Kickstarter running through July 14th at 9 PM Eastern US time for their anthology "What Fates Impose: Tales of Divination". I've been looking forward to reading this anthology since the Table of Contents was released and have backed it on Kickstarter. There are a lot of fantastic short fiction writers in this book and it should be a lot of fun to read.

Since I've worked with Alliteration Ink before, I was given the opportunity to have a sneak peak of several of the stories from the book. If anything, I'm even more excited about holding the anthology in my hands now than I was previously.

• Keffy R. M. Kehrli's "Gazing Into the Carnauba Wax Eyes of the Future" is a bit sad, a bit hilarious, and a bit crazy. Which, when you realize it's about trying to predict the future via marshmallow Peeps, seems just about right.
• Ferrett Steinmetz's "Black Swan Oracle" is a science-fiction story through-and-through even if the main character's name is "The Oracle." Again, a bit funny. And this time quite a bit sad.
• And then there's Beth Wodzinski's "One Tiny Misstep (In Bed)." Holy. Shit. I don't know what else to say about this tale of a marriage gone stale and fortune cookies and the alley outside a Chinese restaurant and... Oh my. Imaginative, realistic in its characterization, and absolutely crushing.

Yeah. This book? Go help it get released into the wild. Go Kickstart it!

Two Short Story Sales & Two Anthology Releases

I got a double shot of good news a couple of days ago with short story sales to both Nature ("An Alien Named Tim") and InterGalactic Medicine Show ("Small Creatures and Large"). I'm looking forward to the release of both of these stories later this year.

Also, this month, two anthologies in which I have stories have been released.

First was the Sidekicks! anthology, edited by Sarah Hans and featuring, among others, Alex Bledsoe. My fantasy con-artist story "Learning the Game" appears in this anthology. There's also a print edition of this book and if you'd like a copy signed by me, hit me up on my contact form and we'll get it worked out.

Second is The California Cantata anthology, released by Kazka Press. My fantasy story "Counting it Up" was accepted for this anthology before I came on as editor of the monthly flash fiction contests for Kazka. So this may well end up being my last story released by the press, and I'm glad it's available for purchase now alongside stories by other writers such as Beth Cato.

Writing to Prompts and Themes

Lots of short fiction publications stick to specific styles or genres of fiction. But there are also some which focus, either typically or occasionally, on prompts or particular themes. Writing for these can be great, especially if you've been feeling stuck recently. But there can be some things you might want to consider before you begin a story geared for one of those markets.

Sunday Links: November 20, 2011 Edition

I haven't talked about progress on my November goals explicitly yet this month, so I figured this was a good time to do so.

1) Write 50,000 words of new fiction. Well on my way. I'm over 40,000 total words for the month with 10 days remaining. If I somehow fail at this one, it would be a shock.
2) Complete ("win") NaNoWriMo. I noted when I set these goals that 1 and 2 were sort of counterparts with 1 being a bit of a "safety net" in case I something went truly awry with my NaNo project. I'm over 70% done with the official NaNo objective now. Again, it would take some monumental collapse for me to not reach this goal.
3) Keep my regular blogging schedule. On pace. If I choose to skip a post or two over the holiday weekend, I don't think I'll count that against myself, though I'll still note it in my month-end wrapup.
4) Write at least one short story of 1000 or more words. Done as of yesterday. I'd written several flash fictions earlier in the month, but nothing lengthier in the short fiction realm.

So, unless anything really bad happens in the next week and a half, I should meet all of these goals. I'm really very happy about this, since I wasn't sure I would be able to both write 51,000 or more words of fiction in a month and keep up blogging regularly.

One other thing I'd like to mention before I get to the links. The recently-completed Platform-Building Campaign run by Rachael Harrie included three challenges. Regular readers of this site will know that I wrote a flash fiction for each challenge and that the 2nd and 3rd both were awarded 8th place out of over 100 entries. One of the other campaigners, Katharina Gerlach, worked with many of the writers of responses to the three challenges and got permission to use their entries in a collection which is currently on sale with the proceeds going to charity. One caveat, I have not vetted the charity to which the funds are going. I trust that it's a good one, but if you want to validate that, by all means do so.

#FridayReads - What I'm Reading

I'm reading several things that I'm really liking right now, so this seemed like a great time to do a #fridayreads blog post. Before I get to the titles, yes, I'm one of those people who reads multiple books at the same time. (Oh, not at the same-same time. You know what I mean... I don't finish one before I start another.) I have been for as long as I can remember. When our house isn't in the middle of major renovations, there's usually a gigantic stack of to-be-reads and just-finished-readings and being-reads and started-but-didn't-finishes sitting on a nightstand by our bed.

That brings up another point.