Category: Story Announcements

Sales, publications, awards, or anything else good that could happen to a story.

On to Round 2!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The results of the first round of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge are in.

The writers of the top 7 stories in each group move on to round 2. There are 88 groups, each with apparently 30-35 stories. In my group, my story came in 6th. Whew.

On Friday, at midnight NYC-time, I’ll be assigned to a new group. Like round 1, we’ll get a genre, a setting, and an object. Then we have 48 hours to write a 1000-word or less story in that genre, set in that place, including that object. Only this time my competition will be people who have already proven their ability to write a decent flash fiction story.

I’m hoping that this round goes a little mor smoothly for me than round 1. Can I get a genre like sci-fi or fantasy or fairytale or comedy? All those were given to some groups in round 1. Political Satire was quite the challenge for me. I think my odds are good of getting a genre that’s a more natural fit for me, but historical fiction and romance are still out there like landmines waiting to blow up in my face.

I was also at my parents’ place for most of round 1’s window. Honestly, the political friction that exists between my folks and me might have helped the genre part of the story, but otherwise it was a big distraction. Round 2’s distraction (as mentioned in my last post) is the start of the school year. Friday is my first in-service day. Fortunately, the writing window is the weekend, so I’m hoping to avoid too much back-to-school distraction. Maybe I can use that atmosphere to my story’s advantage like I did with the last one.

I’m happy to make it to round 2. I was very nervous that I took too many liberties with the setting and object for round 1. I’m going to need a better showing if I want to make round 3. For now, I’m going to polish up that round 1 story and send it out to and editor. I’m supposed to let 10 days pass before publishing the story anywhere, but a 10-day turnaround for a response would be very fast, let alone sub-to-pub. I think there are some markets that “TruthSerum.ai” would fit into nicely. Let’s find out.

Friday, Friday, Friday!

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I’ve decided to release my first collection of short stories, Baker’s Dozen, will hit the Kindle store on Friday (June 15th) with an anticipated price of only $2.99.  It’s the best three bucks you’ll spend all year.

Twenty-three cents per story.  More than four stories per dollar.

I’ll link to it on the blog as soon as it’s available.

* * * * *

In other news, I am a new uncle.  Well, I was an uncle already, but now I’m uncl-ier.  My sister-in-law gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday.  Just thought I’d share my pride.  Congratz to my brother and his family.

Baker’s Dozen – coming soon to Kindle

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

On the advice of…well, at least 13 people, I have compiled 13 of my stories into a self-published ebook and have formatted it for the Kindle.

Why 13?  Well, that makes a Baker’s Dozen.  It was a title suggested by my friend Greg and I couldn’t resist the pun.  Guilty as charged.

Why self-pub?  I can’t see shopping this thing around for forever just to wind up self-pubbing it anyway. I am a long way away from giving up on traditional publishing (novels and magazines), but I’m convinced this is the way to go for a single-author collection.

Why just Kindle?  Okay, it’s not just Kindle.  By the time I release the thing, it may well be ready for Smashwords and Nook, too.  But I’m new at this and there’s a learning curve.

What’s in it?  Oh, I’m so glad you asked!  There’s quite a variety, but stories mostly fit into one of four categories:

  • Space opera like my Writers of the Future winner “Poison Inside the Walls” and my fan favorite “Leech Run”
  • Urban fantasy including my middle grades story “Faerie Belches” and the full version of the Uncle John’s Flush Fiction story “Excuse Me”
  • Near future science fiction like my flash piece “How Quickly We Forget” and the unpublished dystopian tale “Secondhand Rush”
  • Zombie fun like the sports riff “ZFL” and my play on the Pied Piper, “Not Rats”
  • and five others!  (I sound like a Time Life Music infomercial.)

Includes 9 of my greatest hits as well as 4 never before published stories; well over 40,000 words of fiction.  Tiny little flash stories to the top end of the short story scale; dark and gritty to farcically hilarious; hard science to impractical frivolity.  There is something in this collection for absolutely every reader of short speculative fiction, all for the low price of…

Okay, I confess, I’m still waffling on the price point.  When I see individual short stories from writers at similar places in their career selling on Kindle for 99 cents, a fairly high number isn’t hard to envision.  But then I consider the role that low price point plays in getting a reader to try a new writer and something bargain basement makes more sense.  I’m considering splitting the difference (high basement?) and also maybe releasing some of the longer stories for $.99 as single stories plus a teaser for another story in the book.  That’s my best impression of a marketing strategy, folks.

Anyway, I don’t quite have the release date set.  I’ll post it as soon as I do.  I’ll also Tweet it, Facebook it, and do whatever else I can think of to get the word out.

I’m pretty excited about this, excited enough to pull four very solid and promising stories out of my submission cycle to make sure my readers get value for their money.  It sure isn’t everything I’ve ever written or even sold, but this is a sample of my best.  If you’ve ever wondered how good I actually am at this writing stuff, here comes your chance to find out.

Check back soon for the latest.

Emerging from the void

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Well, it’s been two months since I posted.  Personal stuff, we won’t go into it.  But summer is here — always good news for a teacher — so maybe I can be  writer again for a few months.  And we’ll start by writing a blog post.

For starters, I have a story out in a new themed anthology from the Sparkito imprint of Dark Quest books.  The anthology is called Galactic Creatures.  The theme?  Animal satellites.  Yeah, I’ll let that sink in a moment…animal satellites.  When I heard it, I wasn’t sure whether to work with satellites that looked like animals, behaved like animals, contained animals, animals that behaved like satellites…heck, there are probably a dozen ways to interpret the theme.  I suspect that will lend to the variety of the stories within.  No, I haven’t read it yet because I was out of town when my copy arrived.  But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

My story is called “The Scrapper and the Saint Bernard”.  My interpretation fell somewhere between a satellite that looks like and acts like a Saint Bernard dog.  It uses an almost epistolary style, a first for me.  I think it all worked pretty well (he said without prejudice).  Pick up a copy and see for yourself.

In other news, I just got back from my third trip to ConCarolinas in Charlotte.  No, I wasn’t a guest or a panelist; I’m not big enough yet.  (Soon, though.  Soon…  But I digress.)  Con time was split with some time bonding with high school buds, so it wasn’t the immersive con experience I have had other times, but it was definitely a fun trip, as were the last two years there.

The best part was probably spending time with the Magical Words crew again.  Good people, good writers.  They are a big part of why I go every year.  Faith Hunter, A. J. Hartley, David B. Coe/D. B. Jackson, Misty Massey, Carrie Ryan, Kalayna Price, Edmund Schubert, Stuart Jaffe…not all of them are involved with MW anymore, and some are part-timers there, but I have enjoyed their fellowship and wisdom.

I also enjoyed other aspects of CC: the Dr. Horrible sing-along (always a favorite), sci-fi Whose Line Is It Anyway, the costumes, browsing the wares in the dealer room, yadda yadda yadda.  It’s a mid-size con.  It’s fun.  I only hope I’ll get there next year now that my buddy in Charlotte (whose apartment was a few minutes from the con hotel) is moving to Florida.  Note to self: look up cons in Tampa.

That’s it until next time (which won’t be quite so long).

Angry Birds Experiment

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve had a real post here.  Let’s just say I’ve been…distracted.  I’d love to say it’s going to get better, but that may take a while.

I did want to go ahead and document the issue I’ve been having with some angry birds.  Not the iPad variety, the poop-on-my-truck variety.  I don’t know why my truck offends them so.  A little research suggests it’s their own reflection(s) in the glass.  Regardless of the cause, they’re been attacking my ride like well-fibered fiends.  It must stop.

After a fair bit of research and some genuine Southern advice, I have spent a grand total of three dollars on toy snakes to drape over the hood, roof, and the wall I ark beside.  The idea is that bluebirds are afraid of snakes and will thus leave my truck alone.  It’s night 1 of this experiment; I will report on the success/failure of this venture in later posts.

If the snake gambit fails, there are plans to try a fake owl and/or shiny eyeball balloons to deter the featered pests.  If all else fails, I’ll borrow a cat.

Before you leave, be sure you’ve retweeted my April 5th tweet regarding the release of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader: Flush Fiction.  Retweeting enters you to win a free copy of the book!  Not a Tweeter? Just copy the message on your website/blog/Facebook/whatever with a link back to my Flush Fiction giveaway post and I’ll enter you anyway!  Only retweets/entries posted by 11:59 PM (central daylight time) on April 20th will be considered for the free book!

Flush Fiction Giveaway

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Flush Fiction from BRI
Find "Excuse Me" in the new Flush Fiction anthology from Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.

You can win a free copy of Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader‘s first fiction compilation: Flush Fiction.

Flush Fiction includes 88 single-sitting stories including some by friends  of mine.  Oh yeah, my own infamous tale of time-traveling flatulence, “Excuse Me”. I you like flash fiction, you’ll love Flush Fiction.  Go buy it!

All you have to do is retweet the key message to be entered to win a free copy of the book.  I’ll pick one lucky retweeter around the end of the month.  Also accepting Facebook re-postings and links to this post, as long as I can track them and get in touch with you if you win.

Winner to be announced April 20th (or thereabouts).

You can find my recent tweets in the right margin or just click here to go to My Twitter Feed.

Thanks, good luck, and happy retweeting!

How do I miss these things?

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I guess I hadn’t sufficiently Googled myself in a while, but a search of “leech run” baker turned up some interesting things. This one is an analysis of the theme of “Leech Run” as it relates to identity. Profound? Not really, but it was never designed to be a profound story. Then there’s this Science Futures article inspired by “Leech Run” and published through Escape Pod. Neither of these are new; I need to Google myself more often.

Speaking of Escape Pod, they have just offered to buy another story.  “Chasers” was originally in Triangulation 2004 back in…well, in 2004.  It has a similar narrative style to “Leech Run” so I thought they might like it.  Apparently I was right.  No clue when it comes out; watch here for details.

A Captive Audience

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I sold a reprint to a mainstream market!  Well, kind of a mainstream market.  Okay, it’s Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader’s Flush Fiction Anthology.  So it’s better than a mainstream market; this book will be sitting someplace where it’s bound to get picked up and read!

It’s a new life for “Excuse Me”.  It originally ran in The Rejected Quarterly in full 1500-word hilarity.  I shaved it down to size and now it’s flash funny. (Okay, I am contractually obligated to say “make that FLUSH funny.”  Okay, not so much obligated as mildly amused.)

Not sure of the details of when it’ll be out or anything.  More when I find out more.  I can say I that I love the Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader series and I’m stoked to be a part of their first foray into fiction.  What better to put in a bathroom reader than a story about time traveling flatulence?

Look for Me on Boxing Day

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The day after Christmas, a time where people sit around the house and decompress.  A perfect day to read a story from Daily Science Fiction.  At least I’m hoping so since that’s the day my story “Ten Seconds” is scheduled to be released.   It’s a fun little piece starring some middle grade students.  Another flash, but I’ve gotten pretty decent at writing those.

“Ten Seconds” marks my sixth publication of a story 1000 words or less; seventh if you count “Not Rats” which was originally flash then edited to longer.  Quite a ratio of flash to other.  It explains why I’m having so much trouble writing longer stuff.

I’m currently tapping away at a novelette-length piece, that steampunk story I keep mentioning.  I’d be a lot further with it if some personal stuff hadn’t come up and derailed my life.  Nothing I want to talk about, but a definite life-changing moment I’d sooner forget.  Anyway, after that it’s back to my festival-of-the-naked-man novel (title still pending, but I’m leaning toward Naked).  The NaNoWriMo time travel novel has been pretty much abandoned for life plus twenty.  I’m thinking of following Naked with a revision of my very first completed story, a fantasy novel of the ripping-off-Harry variety.  There’s Codex’s Weekend Warrior contest in there somewhere — January, I think — which means bucketloads of new flash to play with.

Yeah, writing has slowed down for me of late but it’s far from abandoned.  It’s not even 10:30 yet, maybe I should go get a few hundred more words into my steampunk story.

Happy Thanksgiving.  (Or to those not under the Stars and Stripes, Happy Thursday.)

ZFL scheduled for EDF

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

My zombie football flash story “ZFL” is on the November table of contents for Every Day Fiction.  Mark your calendars for the 19th.  I’ll post a link here the day it comes out.  No word yet on my forthcoming Daily Science Fiction story, “Ten Seconds”.  I hear the wait from sale to publication is significant.

In other news, I wrote 1800+ new words on my NaNoWriMo yesterday.  I’m not ahppy with all those words, but part of that is a voice issue I’ll iron out later in rewrites.  My little stat graph still doesn’t have me on target yet, but I’m hoping to hammer out a bunch this weekend.  We’ll see.