Good day yesterday for What If?

This collection (see below!) made it into the top 100 scifi anthology list yesterday(12-29-09) which is pretty cool considering it has had no real official promotion and, as far as I can tell, no reviews as of yet. It's a cracking little collection, very diverse, and I'm glad it's holding its own out there in the scary world.

What If? sci-fi anthology now available!

It's here! Readme Publishing's What If? anthology of science fiction shorts went live today!
Here's the link to it on Amazon

High on a hill was a lonely Welsh girl...

A good acceptance today - the Elements of Horror anthology, edited by the very gentlemanly Clive Martyn. All the stories rotate around one of the four elements - fire, earth, wind and water. My story is water, called Coal Dust. Very happy to be in this one, doubly so because my writing confidante and fellow Englander Neil Coghlan is also in there, with a fantastic fire story. The book is due out in April of 2010!

2 Holds, 1 Acceptance - Saddle Up!

Alright, two stories are on hold with two very different collections I really hope to be included in, and one story is accepted today with an anthology I also wanted to get in, being a huge Western movie fan.

The acceptance is for The Zombist: Undead Tales from the Old West which is going to be a brilliant collection of Western genre chaos and already has a few writers in it whose work I enjoy with more to come! Mine is called The Undead Cattle Company. Thanks to the mighty Dr. P and his ever growing empire over at LOTLDP

The two holds, well, hopefully I get to update those with good news down the line - fingers crossed!

French love and American death

A couple of new acceptances this week to make me very happy indeed.

First, and I'm not going to go into how this came to be, an adult tale I wrote called Filthy New Romantics has been accepted by a fantastic-sounding erotica anthology titled Surprise (see my main website for more details!)

Secondly, an old-fashioned horror story I did - That Maternal Instinct - has been accepted by a new horror magazine called Night Chills.

Black Matrix

Very pleased with both of these, for different reasons!

Also, I now have an online bio/credits webpage set up

Harper 1.0

Links etc

Just a note - as these various books are published I will certainly be linking to them.

The Telescopes plus End of the World

News of another acceptance arrived just now - this for the Robert Essig edited antho called Through The Eyes of the Undead, stories told from the zombie POV. A lot harder to write than you might think! Mine is the sad tale of a woman called To Kill A Dead Girl Walking. The title is a riff on a song by The Telescopes, from the unbelievably great Taste album.

More print!

Another acceptance - this one a comedic piece for a book taking the piss out of all those zombie survival guides, kind of a Carry On Zombies if you like - called The Morons Guide To The Inevitable Zombocalypse from the Library of the Living Dead Press. Compiled and edited by Timothy Long.

My effort is called Zombiebowl and is about entertainment during the apocalypse. Happy to be a part of this, its a great idea!


If only this film poster was real...

Accepted!

Victory dance time!
A Splash of Orange was a winner and one of fourteen stories chosen for the ReadMe Publishing sci-fi anthology What If?
The book is scheduled to go to print in October and will be available on Amazon and the usual places thereafter. I'm very, very happy this particular story made it!

Here's the full list of futuristic tales chosen for the collection -

1 Extra Good Care – By Valerie Hodge

2 Not Your Ordinary Little Green Men – By Kelli Wilkins

3 Danger, Maybe – By Marian Powell

4 The Rocket Ship – By Ian Lamberto

5 The House That Doomsday Built – By Justin Woolley

6 Journey to the Surface – By Dixie Sorensen

7 The Last Soldier – By John J. Rust

8 What if Rose Was Right – By Grace Gannon Rudolph

9 Herd Mentality – By Paul A. Freeman

10 Precipitation and Devotion – By Stevie Poppe

11 A Splash of Orange – By Harper Hull

12 Austin 2009 – By Derek Rutherford

13 We Don't Do Windshields – By Don Magin

14 Teleporter – By Jennifer Caddell

ReadMe Publishing

Newsfest/50 Grand

Lots of writing and subs going on, as usual

Good news

A Splash of Orange made it to the final round of a sci-fi story contest, so fingers crossed there.

Also, one of the writing groups I am part of is sending out manuscripts for a 50-story collection with several stories by each of us. It is codenamed Fifty Grand and is a very strong anthology covering all sorts of genres. I have 4 stories involved. And with a bunch of us behind it, it will get a good push until it reaches the right hands. Excited about this! Starting with UK based publishers as most of the collective are based in England, and I think all of us are actually British by birth.

Undead Yay!

Two pieces accepted for a zombie poetry anthology - seriously!

Ten Little Zombies - a childlike, nursery-rhyme death spree in 10 stanzas.

The Undead Shall Have No Dominion - hardcore serious time! Inspired by the Dylan Thomas poem with a similar name only, er, about zombies.

The shuffling ghouls are being good to me at the moment.

In other news -

A Splash Of Orange was returned to me with a very, very nice long letter of mainly praise but, as I sort of feared, the ending was too 'out there' for them. Which is fair enough, I suspected the grand finale may be a little too much. Into the rewrite folder!

New stuff - a short story called Judas at The Gates of Hell which has nothing to do with Iscariot or Hell. It actually ended up being a steampunk piece that reads like the beginning of some mammoth trilogy in the manner of The Dark Tower. It was far too fun to write so must be crap! I'd like to see where the main protagonist goes though.

Worst Month Ever

Long time, I know.

I finally went ahead and seriously tried to quit smoking, 3 years later than I intended but a year sooner than I expected :)
It has been (and still is) awful. I'm on day 22 without a smoke, symptoms du jour included throwing up, migraines and possibly blacking out for 2 hours. Still not sure about that one.

I felt a hundred times better when I was lighting up. I know it will be worth it, but the journey to get there is horrible.

Anyway, writing stuff. I can barely read a book right now, let alone write anything. I have been keeping up with the little 1000 worder contests that a writers forum I frequent run every week. I've come up with little pieces including one about a psychic on the Titanic, (A Great & Terrible Gesture) one about a loving couple's last morning on Earth (Terminal Sunday) and my favourite, God's Librarian, a tale of how higher powers look after the world's great and classic authors until they can write their master work.

Summary: Yes, I am alive and hope to be back up to speed really soon.

Rough Terrain

A Splash Of Orange is submitted.
It took me pretty much a full 2 days and nights of editing 3000 words but I really, really like it.
I don't want to see it again for a long time but I really, really like it :)
It has been sent to an excellent old-school Sci-Fi magazine called Ray Gun Revival. Fingers crossed.

Next, finish up the Chester ghost story.
I also have an idea based on a ridiculous thing I said once about building a town especially for midgets. We'll see where that goes....

And Home Again...

OK, A Splash Of Orange is done, it's now 'in the drawer' for a bit before I go back and edit it heavily. Oh, these plastic toys pretty much represent how I picture the cosmonauts in these stories, very old school, retro-heavy futuristic chic.
Fishbowl helmets, clunky boots and comic book lazer guns.
Looking through some open markets now and seeing who would be best to send a surreal, psychological sci-fi to, with the intent of there being more in the future.

Yesterday I banged out a new story in a new setting. I think it's going to be titled On Royal Land but I'm not convinced. I have a new character, a just-teenage schoolboy living in one of England's most haunted little towns. I think he'll show up again, and live through the ghost stories I grew up surrounded by and hearing. Autobiographical mythology, yes, but the character himself is based on various friends and family, not on myself.

Bang!

Sign Language - accepted!

I just did a little dance

A Splash Of Orange/Waiting

The worst thing about having actually submitted something is trying to forget about it, get on with new stuff. Publishers will display their deadlines when requesting stuff, and most of the time it's quite a way down the line. Months. So, send something off, let it go, move on.

Not as easy as it sounds, I'm still checking twice a day to see if a decision has been made. Of course, it hasn't.

Yesterday I added a new element to the 'in progress' pile. I've always had these strange little tales rattling around my head set in a sci-fi setting. Think minimal tech-talk sci-fi, very 50's/60's feeling, old-school rocketships and form-fitted spacesuits in bright colours with go-faster stripes. Ray guns, not plasma rifles.

Anyway, I started the first story in this set, A Splash Of Orange, it all revolves around colonizing Venus. I like it, and it's a hell of a lot of fun to write out. There won't be huge fleets of starships or massive battles with aliens, these are personal little tales that just happen to be set in this particular scenario. Obviously I intend for there to be some kind of Venusian life form, but they won't be six-eyed lizard people or massive bugs. They'll be like us, only different. Simpler yet more advanced. And they'll really, really mess with the orange spacesuit wearing Earthlings trying to move onto their turf. Rocket by rocket. Cosmonaut by cosmonaut.

Press Start

After years and years of talking about it (mainly to myself) I've decided to start taking my writing seriously and attempt to get my work out there. So many pieces in progress, fragmented foundations of possibly wonderful stories, laying around getting dusty - no more. Plus, I am brimming over with ideas at the moment and need to start making these imagined people and places breathe and grow. Sometimes die and fall, too. This is a statement of intent to myself, mainly.

Most of the things I love writing down seem to crawl from the dark side of my imagination, so I'm going to look around and try to find smaller, less well known publishing companies with similar mindsets to share with you. Hopefully point you in the way of some damn good storytelling.

Today I actually crossed the line of (hopefully) no return and submitted 2 pieces I have been working on and finally finished.

Serenadin - an Appalachian ghost story set at Christmas time. Subbed to Woodland Press who are working on an anthology called Appalachian Holiday Hauntings. I'm really happy with this, it's intended for a PG book aimed at public school systems and I tried to keep it as classic and timeless as possible. Even to the point where, during editing, I removed a character's GPS system and gave him a raggedy map instead. My only doffed cap to modern marvels is a stainless steel coffee maker.

Sign Language - this is a rush of adrenaline one-shot one-kill piece of flash fiction, subbed to a Zombie ff anthology named The Quick And The Undead published by Library Of The Living Dead Press. Fun, and hopefully different enough to make the grade in a genre that has been beaten to within an inch of it's life, again.


I'm also in progress on a longer zombie story called The Undead Preservation Society and a short tale from the Hanging Rock canon (more on that later) called, for now, Trinkets And Charms