I love the smell of a sale in the morning

I know I keep hammering away at the importance of persistence, but damn it, it’s important. Here’s one more example.

The Maple Leaf Maneuver is a snarky bit of fun that uses Canada’s recent changes it its Citizenship Law as a jumping off point. It’s one of those stories that if you asked how much of it is true, I would have to say all of it — except for the parts that I made up.

Anyway, I sent it off awhile back to a flash fiction contest. The results were announced early last week and my name wasn’t on the list. ::sigh::

But I knew it was a good story, so instead of sitting around, trying to figure out why I had failed and feeling sorry for myself, I sent it off right away to Every Day Fiction.

Managing Editor Camille Gooderham Campbell e-mailed me early today — a five-day turnaround — to say she thought the story was great fun and that she wanted to buy it.

God, this business is so much about finding the right writer-story- editor match. It’s like putting the pieces of a jigsaw together or recognizing the proper sudoku pattern. I’m starting to think of it as fusion.

Anyway, thank you, Camille.

A 10/31/09 Update: I just got the word.  The Maple Leaf Maneuver will appear on November 23, 2009.  I’ll post a reminder.

The Best of Every Day Fiction 2009

Managing Editor Camille Gooderham Campbell e-mailed me yesterday to let me know four of my five flash fiction stories published at Every Day Fiction during the magazine’s second year (September 1, 2008 to August 31, 2009) will be included in The Best of Every Day Fiction 2009.

They aren’t a thing alike.

I Must to the Barber’s Chair is a gentle love story.  It appeared the first day of the publishing year — September 1.  In His Prime (October 16) is speculative fiction, a time-travel story involving one of boxing’s most famous champions. Oh, Woman of Easy Virtue (November 21) is a snarky bit of whimsical word play.  Upon the Doorsteps (January 22 — my birthday) is a somber mother-daughter encounter that just might be a ghost story.

I love each one and each for a different reason.  And I’m so pleased they appeared at Every Day Fiction.

Thank you, Camille.

At Flash Fiction Chronicles

Gay Degani is still off on retreat in Vermont; bewitching words, turning them into stories that will take your breathe away.  So, I did a guest column for Flash Fiction Chronicles today.  On Stubborn Rams and Terawatt Dams takes a look at rejection and the value of persistence.

Check it out, if you get a chance.  And peruse some of the wisdom submitted by other contributors while you’re there.

Go on; go on.  The show is over here — for the moment.

At AlienSkin magazine

My flash, We Who Are Ernest Now Salute You, is up over at AlienSkin Magazine.

It’s tongue-in-cheek silliness, a flashback, I suppose, to my years living in Key West. I must admit that I never saw an actual minion of pure evil in the Southern-Most City. At least, I don’t think so. In Key West, it’s hard to tell.

Check it out, if you have a chance. Let me know what you think. I hope you like it.

An update

I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall this morning. It’s a cautionary tale about mucking about with the natural order of things, even when it appears that there has been crossed signals. 2,800 words. I’m pleased with it now, but I’ll let it set a few days and then go back to it. If I still feel good about it then, I’ll send it out.

I also have completed the outline for my SF novel, Power in the Blood, and have 10,000 words in the file. I’ll tell you more about it when it’s a bit further along.

UPDATING THE UPDATE (Monday, October 13, 2009): It has been a week since I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall, so I ran it through my critters. I wound up changing the POV from first-person to third-person, doing a full rewrite and adding 300 words.

Oh, the humanity!

My work station is littered with the skeletal remains of old paragraphs and bloodied by the wholesale slaughter of words. Even so, she lives and is a better story. A writer who ignores an honest critique does so at her peril.

I’m going to comb its adjectives and brush its verbs now, so that I can send it off to Clarke’s World before the day is through.