Fortnightly update 35: 29.03.2021 to 11.04.2021
In this blog series, I share my fortnight-to-fortnight triumphs (and failures) as a writer. Despite all the ups and downs, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Flash fiction and short stories
I’m currently submitting flash fiction and short stories to online magazines and such for publication. It’s been a big fortnight for me. Two of my previously accepted stories were released, and I broke a MASSIVE rejection streak of around about 30. On the 7th, one of my 500-ish-word stories was accepted by Ghost Orchid Press for publication in their online magazine The Crypt, and the very next morning, one of my short stories was accepted by Quill & Crow for publication in their anthology Anomalies & Curiosities. This latter one is an especially big win, as it will be my first published short story (it’s about 5,500 words), and I got paid for it too. I’ll have more news for you on those acceptances over the next few months, but if you were interested in those two which have just been released, you can check them out here:
• Human Suit — in Issue 271 of AntipodeanSF (accepted 27.12.2020)
• Demon Love — in the anthology Seven Deadly Sins – Gluttony by Black Hare Press (accepted 01.12.2020)
Last fortnight, I said I might start sharing my submission and rejection/acceptance stats, but with my recent success, I’m just gonna bloody do it. Between the 29th and the 11th, this is what I got:
Submissions: 5
Rejections: 4
Acceptances: 2
Obviously those stats look pretty good, but they are by no means representative of a usual fortnight. As I said, I’ve just come off of a rejection streak, with my last acceptance occurring in December 2020.
I also worked on a couple of new stories but ended up abandoning one and sticking the other in the bottom drawer. I can’t dawdle on my victories for too long; I’ve got to get right back into it.
Frontier Media
I write scripts for Frontier Media, a media production company specialising in YouTube. Our two largest channels are The Front and Geetsly’s, and while I’ve written for Geetsly’s in the past, I mostly write for The Front and our new, smaller channel The Braved. Two videos for which I wrote the scripts were published this fortnight.
I write 280-character stories and poems using various writing prompt hashtags on Twitter. This fortnight, I was naughty and only wrote one piece. I promised I would do better this fortnight, but I did not.
#birds
The crows were the only birds that did not reorient their flocks towards my house and break their necks upon my windows. They watched me with their blue-white eyes. They watched because they knew what I had called into this world. For they were all of them its children.
Conclusion
Those acceptances were my front-page news this fortnight. Everything else was pretty stock standard. Oh yeah, I turned 28 on the 6th. That was… nice?
Thanks for reading <3