Tag: Every day Fiction

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.

 

Bad News, Bears, and Some Good News

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

Let’s take the title in order.

The Bad News: I returned from vacation to find a form rejection from Buzzy Mag.  Buzzy is still in the start-up process and has endured some interesting, non-standard submission policies, but now seems to be aligning itself more with pro level mags.  For instance, at one time their submission acceptance process included mandatory Beta-reading, but that’s gone.  They do still take only snail mail subs, but that’s about as out there as their current process seems to be.  Not that any of that matters since they rejected TWHDotGMP.  Gosh, I need to find a market that wants that one.  I know it’s out there…somewhere.

The Bears: I saw a bear a couple days ago, as I may have mentioned on Twitter.  Big and fast.  Runs like a dog.  I see a story involving ursine aliens in my future.

And Some Good News: After a friendly query to the publisher and my good friend Jordan Ellinger, I received an acceptance email from Every Day Fiction for my zombie-football story, “ZFL”.  This will mark my third story with EDF (here are one and two), making it the clear winner for the “zine that published the most stories of mine” award.  The publisher with the comparable award is Sam’s Dot Publishing who ran five (“Decisions, Decisions!”, “Blood of a Soldier”, “Occupational Dogma”, “Faerie Belches”, and “Brother Goo”).  I haven’t sent Sam’s Dot anything in a while  I need to drop them a line…

I feel sheepish

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

No literal sheep here, just embarrassment.  

In my most recent sale to Every Day Fiction I changed the character’s name in mid story.  I didn’t catch it, the editor didn’t catch it.  Thank goodness it wasn’t print media.  The offending name change has been corrected but the evidence remains in the comments, as well it probably should.

“The Drake’s Eye” isn’t the shortest story I ever sold, but it is probably the one I spent the least time on…even less than I spent on “In or Out”, a 69-word story that received the best reviews of my career despite never earning me a dime.  I spent maybe three hours on TDE.  That’s a dollar an hour.  I can retire on that, right?  Apparently I should have spent another ten minutes.  

For the record, the names “Lucas” and “Jacob” read very similarly with that hard C in the middle.  I don’t remember if I changed the name from Jacob to Lucas and didn’t finish the search-and-replace or if I just mentally flipped names for no reason.  Regardless, it’s a silly mistake that should have been caught but wasn’t, an embarrassing reminder that the world is not perfect and neither am I.  Like I need that reminder.

The best reason to query overdue responses

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 6 Comments

I was sitting at my computer, procrastinating my bedtime, and decided to query Every Day Fiction about a story I’d had out to them for 77 days.  In my experience, queries usually grease the wheels of rejection and free up stories for other markets.  I originally thought EDF would likely buy this story (especially since I’ve never taken the steps to collect payment from them on the first story they bought), but I’ve given up on overconfidence.  So I queried.

Apparently the story had already been accepted and my response was lost in cyberspace (probably blocked by a spam filter that couldn’t prevent a boatload of canned meat from docking in my inbox).  Moreover, the story hits the web tomorrow!  (That’s probably today by this point!)

Yes, friends, “Drake’s Eye” will be EDF’s story of the day on May 6th.  (If you missed it, it’ll be up for a while.)

That is what I call a well timed query.  I could have missed my own publication.  Whew.

So now I need to share this info with the world before said world wakes tomorrow and misses my mini-glory.  Consider yourself informed.

Little sale, big relief

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

The first short story I ever wrote sold to the first market I sent it to (The Fifth Di… I think).  I attribute that luck to good market research and a charitable editorial staff.  Since that inaugural publication, no story has sold to its first market.  Until today.

Big thanks to Jordan Lapp and his staff at Every Day Fiction.  They picked up “How Quickly We Forget” without it being rejected by anyone else first.  The story was inspired by a prompt from Jordan.

Being a friend, Jordan didn’t want to look at it without knowing his editors’ opinions first.  Fortunately they liked it, too.  No word yet on whn the massive three-dollar chec will arrive.  They still have “A Game of Telephone” in their queue, the story I wrote for the CoolStuff4Writers.com all-dialogue contest in May.  Maybe they’ll like that, too.

It’s always good to make a sale, no matter the size of the check.  It’s even better when it’s the firsttime selling to a market.  It’s an added bonus it’s Jordan’s zine.

-Oso