Earthbound Fiction launched its first anthology with “Sparks: Exciting New Fantasy From Today’s Brightest Stars,” a collection of twelve fantasy stories.
My tiny flash story “The Getaway” isn’t, strictly speaking, fantasy. It’s a strange mix of humor, suspense and literary with speculative overtones. But it’s something I enjoyed writing and, I hope, you will enjoy reading–a nice palate cleanser between some excellent longer stories included in this book.
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Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: earthbound fiction, fantasy, getting published, sparks | 
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
I’m pleased to announce that One Buck Horror will be publishing my short story “A Thousand Cuts.”
This story was originally submitted to a Cafe Doom horror writing contest. The top prize for this contest was publication at One Buck Horror. Although “A Thousand Cuts” comfortably made it into the top 10 (based on anonymous popular vote by the entrants) among 50 or so entries, it was not ultimately selected as a finalist by OBH editor Christopher Hawkins.
But then, a really cool thing happened. Mr. Hawkins was kind enough to offer feedback to any of the top 10 finishers who asked for it. I contacted him and, upon reading the story again, Mr. Hawkins offered some suggestions and invited me to resubmit an updated version to OBH.
I was happy to comply. I spent a few days working on the rewrites and ended up with a slightly longer story that followed the same general plot, but was different in tone and feel. I then submitted this new version of the story, and waited.
Six weeks later Mr. Hawkins got back to me, letting me know that he did not like the rewrite as much as the original. He felt that the longer version lost the dreamlike quality of the original. However, he was willing to make some edits and send them to me, so I could try again.
For those of you who don’t submit stories I must explain that this is a rare thing. Most of the time editors are going to either accept or reject a submission. They rarely have the time to work on the story that’s *almost* there, and a second rewrite request is exceedingly rare. Needless to say, I was thrilled to work with him on the changes.
Turned out, the changes he wanted were smaller and more subtle than I was shooting for in my original rewrite. However, they did smooth out and further improve the story! Over the course of a couple of days we had a version we were both happy with. I’m proud to announce the upcoming publication with special thanks to Christopher Hawkins. who believed in the story enough and had the patience to work with me to make this happen.
4 Comments | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: cafe doom, fiction, horror, one buck horror, submission, writing | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
A few months ago I found out about a new Kindle magazine called Stupefying Stories. It was launched and edited by Mr. Bruce Bethke, the man who coined the term “cyberpunk” back in the day, and has been an influential voice in the science fiction field. Naturally, I wanted to have a story of mine appear in this shiny new ‘zine.
I sent out a piece, and got a “close, but no cigar” rejection. Mr. Bethke did encourage me to send in more stuff, and to send more than one story. I obliged, sending two pieces of flash fiction.
“A Brief Respite from Eternity” is a love story set in the final stages of the heat death of the universe. “Number Station” is a horror/dark fantasy piece which takes place in modern Russia. They’re two very different stories, in tone, subject and voice. I figured my best bet was to offer a range and hope that Mr. Bethke and other editors would like one or the other.
I was overjoyed to find out, late last night, that they liked and accepted both! I don’t have the publication details yet, but from what I gleaned from the e-mails it sounds like “Brief Respite” will appear first, with “Number Station” to be published sometime in the future.
Yesterday also marked the reappearance of the first story I ever wrote, “The Skeptic,” on the Internet. Its original publisher shut their virtual doors last year and took the site down. Bent Masses stepped in and accepted “The Skeptic” as a reprint. It has been published in their January issue and can be read here.
3 Comments | Acceptances & Publications | Tagged: bent masses, fantasy, fiction, science fiction, stupefying stories, writing | Permalink
Posted by Alex Shvartsman
The time between Christmas and New Years is typically a lull, with few writerly news to report, good or bad. This year my holiday week has been a busy one:
* I received word that my space opera adventure story “The Dragon Ships of Tycho” has been accepted into an anthology it was written for. This was the first time I was invited by an editor to submit something for an upcoming project. I was flattered, and did my best to come up with a quality story that would suit the anthology theme. I submitted in October and received a positive response this week. I can’t share the details, as this anthology has not been officially announced yet by the publisher – but it will be a physical book and it will likely be released in 2012.
* “The Skeptic” will be reprinted in the January issue of Bent Masses. This was the first story I wrote once I decided to take up fiction, and my first story accepted for publication. Originally it appeared at Absent Willow Review – an online magazine that recently closed its doors. They took down all their content, so “The Skeptic” isn’t currently available online. Bent Masses will kindly fix that on January 15.
* Christine Amsden, author of SF novel “The Immortality Virus” and other speculative works, published a mini-review of my DSF story “Spidersong” on her blog. She called Spidersong “satisfyingly creepy.” You can read her blog post here.
* I’m very nearly done with “Requiem for a Druid” – my second Conrad Brent yarn. At 6300 words, it’s the longest story I’ve written to date. This is an urban fantasy featuring lots of action, magic, plot twists and horrible puns I shouldn’t be able to get away with. At one point I actually have Conrad utter the phrase “These aren’t the druids you’re looking for.” With the wavy hand motion, and everything. Special thanks to authors Ken Liu, Michael Haynes and Victoria Jakes, as well as a number of my non-writing friends, who all pitched in offering critiques on the story and catching my many embarrassing typos. I hope to send “Requiem” out on submission by early next week. It should be my first W1S1 submission of 2012!
The year is almost out and I’m planning to do a blog post analyzing my annual submission statistics, but every one of the remaining few days counts and 2011 isn’t over quite yet. There are approximately 20 stories out on submission at the moment, and it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that I will still hear back about one or more of them before January 1st.
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
Today I signed the contract for and can officially announce the sale of “The Getaway” to Earthbound Fiction.
Earthbound Fiction is a new publisher, soliciting short stories for their SF and Fantasy anthologies. They’re also running a monthly contest, with the winning story posted on their site. Although my story did not win the November contest, they enjoyed it enough to pick up for their forthcoming flash fiction anthology.
“The Getaway” is a tiny flash fiction story and its genre is somewhere between humor and suspense – so it doesn’t fit into either of their current anthologies, so I must assume they’ll be publishing it in a Flash antho sometime later next year. Either way, this is an odd duck of the story that I really like, and I was happy that it found a good home.
This month’s contest is themed. Earthbound is looking for holiday stories under 500 words – so if you have something appropriate, consider sending it their way. After all, the more great stories they buy, the sooner an anthology that includes “The Getaway” can be published 🙂
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Posted by Alex Shvartsman
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