Story Publication: "ReFormed" at Buzzy Mag

"Marshall churned away on an elliptical machine at his gym. His attention wandered from the news during a commercial and he noticed a woman running on a treadmill across the room. He only saw her in profile, but she looked like Carol. Not Carol right before she died, lying in a hospital bed. Carol when they first met, several years ago. Carol when she said 'Yes' to his proposal and accepted the ring he offered."

- From "ReFormed"

My science fiction story about a man who finds a woman who has the same face as his dead fiancee is live today on Buzzy Mag. "ReFormed" is one of my favorites of my stories.

I need to give special thanks here to Brenda Stokes Barron. She read several versions of this story and kept encouraging me to make it a fuller story as I took it through revisions. I'm sure it's a much better story than it would have been without her help.

This is, as far as I know, the last story I'll have published for a little while. I'm sure you'll all be glad for the break. :)

If you read this story, I hope that you enjoy it!

Story Publication: "Other Kinds" in Issue #3 of Nine

The third issue of new speculative fiction electronic magazine Nine is online now. My story "Other Kinds" appears in this issue. I've mentioned before that I like crime and mystery fiction and this story is a blend of a crime story with a dark fantasy.

I have both of the first two issues of Nine and have enjoyed the stories I've read from them. The issue is $5; if you happen to read this issue, I hope that you enjoy "Other Kinds."

Being Smart About My Writing Goals

If you follow my blog posts about my goals, you might have noticed that September was not my best month. I met some of my goals but whiffed badly on some others.

While I'm somewhat disappointed with my September results, I don't necessarily mind the idea that I'm not always going to hit 100% of my goals. I want to have goals that are aggressive enough that I'm accomplishing a lot rather than "just" meeting goals.

"Scraps" Emailed By Daily Science Fiction Today

My short story "Scraps" is the emailed story today from Daily Science Fiction. If you don't get those emails, you'll be able to read the story next Thursday on their website. I'll provide a link then.

If you do get the emails, please note that a sentence fragment slipped into the emailed version of the story right at the beginning. Please disregard that. The editors have said that the version which goes on the web will have this error corrected.

I hope that you enjoy the story if you read it, or that you've already enjoyed it if you're coming here after having read it.

October Goals

September was not my best month for meeting my writing goals. One nice thing about having monthly goals, though, is that every month is a chance to start anew.

With that in mind, here are my goals for the month of October.

1) Keep my Daily Writing Chain going. - It's now 13 months long and growing. Even on days when things have been rough for one reason or another, I've kept it going. I feel good about that, but it's also an ongoing thing. So, as always, it's my top goal for the month.

2) Write and submit one brand-new story. - This is my regular month Write 1/Sub 1 goal. Though I didn't have it listed as a specific goal for September, I did accomplish it with my submission to Malfeasance Occasional.

3) Revise and submit one pending story each week. - For these purposes I'm viewing weeks as being Monday to Sunday, so my goal will be to get a story out the door no later than this coming Sunday and then to do the same thing each week. If I meet this goal fully, I'll get four stories out the door from my "backlog." Last month I had aimed to revise six stories and got exactly zero done. I think that goal felt "too big" especially once I got behind on things. This new goal gives me a chance to succeed (or fail) every week, which I think should help me avoid another goose egg at the very least.

4) Submit a story for the Codex Halloween contest. - This, combined with goal #3, means that I need to get a fair amount of writing time in this week since the Halloween contest closes Sunday morning.

5) On 10/31 have two non-time-sensitive blog posts written and ready to post on a day when I'm not otherwise able to post something "new." - I'd had this goal on my lists earlier this year and was doing okay with it for a while. However, I've gotten out of the habit. Since keeping to my regular blogging schedule is something I value, I want to get back to having a bit of a reserve.

6) Read thirty short stories. - Whether I do that specifically by keeping up with #storyeachnight (essentially) every night or otherwise. Reading regularly is helpful to my development as a writer, and as such it makes sense to list it explicitly as a goal.

"Out with the Crowd" Live at Interstellar Fiction

My baseball science fiction short story "Out with the Crowd" is live today at Interstellar Fiction. It's a very timely publication, with the Major League Baseball playoffs starting later this week.

I don't tend to write a lot of "hard" science fiction, but that's an apt descriptor for this story. Its basis is the very real biomechanical principles which state that pitchers are bumping right up against the limits of what the human arm can do in terms of speed on their pitches. While average speed has increased over time and there is some dispute about the reliability of various types of speed guns for measuring the speed of pitches, there has simply not been a dramatic increase in the top speed pitchers have reached in the past 50 years. (One list of "fastest pitches" is at this link.)

The reason that this record isn't constantly falling as other sports-related records (such as the sprint times in track and field, marathon times, swimming times, etc.) is because the human arm just can't throw a baseball any harder than it already is. As the article notes:

"Shoulder rotation in baseball pitching is the fastest motion of any joint in any athlete," Fleisig says; moving faster than hip joints in sprinters or shoulders in elite tennis players.

My story starts from that science and wonders what would happen if something gave batters -- who are currently limited by their ability to process information about the incoming pitch and react to it -- an insurmountable edge against pitchers.

I hope you enjoy reading this story.

Kazka Press October Issue Live

The October, 2012 Issue of Kazka Press is live. This issue includes the six flash fiction stories on the theme of "Love Beyond Death" which I selected for them as Guest Editor. There's also a longer story by Ada Hoffman titled "Sage and Coco." There are PDF and EPUB versions of the issue, if you prefer to read that way.

The six stories I chose were:

• "The Chamber" by Mary Ann Back
• "Journey to the Leak Point" by Russ Colson
• "Burning Love" by Jeff James
• "The Skeleton's Wife" by J. D. McLaughlin
• "In the Mirror's Heart" by Cat Rambo
• "Mikey Frick Finds a Flower" by Robert Lowell Russell

I hope that you enjoy reading these stories.