Nick Petrou Copywriter

Fortnightly update 39: 24.05.2021 to 06.06.2021

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.

Short fiction

I’m currently submitting short fiction, mostly flash fiction and short stories, to online magazines and such for publication, and I got some fantastic news this fortnight. I’ve been listening to The Arcanist’s podcast for a good while now and have been submitting to them, without success, for just as long. On the morning of 2nd, though, I found out that I won FIRST PLACE in their hunger-themed flash fiction contest, which is just epic. It’s easily my biggest writing victory to date, and I’m just so grateful about the whole thing. My winning story, Goblins, should go live in the near future, so I’ll share it here when it does. I also found out that my story Widow of the River has been accepted for publication too, though I’ll wait till I get the thumbs-up from the publisher before I announce anything more about that!

Other than that, it’s been pretty quiet on the submission front. I’ve been putting work into a new and very secret project, so that took up most of my time. You can expect to find out more about said project within the next month or so.

For now, here at this fortnight’s stats:

Submissions: 1
Pending: 4
Rejections: 2
Acceptances: 2

My story Not My Wife also went live with Ghost Orchid Press. It’s short and creepy; check it out!

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 a little for Geetsly’s in the past, I mostly write for The Front and our new, smaller channel The Braved. Five videos for which I wrote the scripts were published this fortnight; here are my total stats:

Videos for The Front: 90
Videos for The Braved: 19

Twitter

I write 280-character stories and poems using various writing prompt hashtags, mostly #vss365, on Twitter. I wrote four this fortnight!

#funeral

He never expected he would attend his own funeral. But here he was, standing next to his murderer and screaming that she’ll burn in hell for this. Unable to hear him, she took to the podium and soon had the crowd weeping for the loss of her third husband’s only son.

#quaint

Who would’ve guessed that Baal would enter our world via the basement of a quaint suburban home? Tom had rolled the dice in just the right way. Zoe had read the just right spell card. And Eric’s blood, from one of his spontaneous nosebleeds, had sealed our fate.

#doppelganger

My doppelganger gives blood and feeds the homeless. He runs for charity and never buys plastic bags. If they’re supposed to be us but evil, I think I know what that means about me. I also know what I have to do. With no one left to compare me with, who could ever tell?

#happy

He wasn’t too happy about losing an arm, but at least the prosthesis had a built-in lasgun he could use to smoke the corporate a-hole who’d crushed his original appendage with his Audi’s anti-grav track. Why stop there, actually? There’re far too many suits in this city.

Conclusion

Winning that contest is the big news this fortnight. I swear I spent the next few days just coming to terms with it, and also allowing myself to take a breath. I’m gonna try and write and submit at least one new story this coming fortnight, so wish me luck.

And thanks for reading <3