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.