Flash Fiction Sale

My flash fiction piece of gothic horror, Burgundy, inspired by many summers spent exploring wine country in France, has just been accepted to appear in the forthcoming anthology, 99 tiny Terrors from Pulse Publishing.

Short Story Sale to NewMyths.com

My latest short story sale is a flash piece called ‘The Last Library’ which has found a home at NewMyths.com. It is due to be published later this year. I’ll let you know when it comes online.

The MG Sci-Fi void.

I’m currently pitching a Sci-Fi kid’s novel to agents, so I headed over to my local branch of Waterstones in order to try to identify comparison titles. (Similar books that I can reference in my covering letter to give prospective agents an idea of where on the shelves my story would fit.)

This particular book of mine is aimed at the 10+ market, the same market as Red Rock. It’s quite sciency but not science heavy and I’ve made sure that the science in it is accessible. It’s probably best described as a Girls in STEM story.

So I started searching in the 9-12 age section for similar types of books – and you know what – nothing. I couldn’t find a single book even remotely sciency or Sci-Fi! Nothing! Diddly-squat!!!

So I came home and searched on Amazon. I found a couple but nothing that would really work as a comparison title!

I did the same for YA and guess what? Yup. Apart from the hangovers from the Dystopia boom a while back – and yes, Dystopia is a type of Sci-Fi – but my book isn’t a dystopia, so they weren’t a good match either.

It’s puzzling. There’s a huge drive to encourage STEM subjects at school, and particularly to encourage girls into STEM – it’s nothing new – it’s been going on for a while – so why isn’t this being reflected in kid’s literature?

Then, yesterday I spotted an agent commenting on this very thing. Her inbox was full of YA Sci-Fi – which suggested to her that there were plenty of readers and writers of the genre out there - but editors simply don’t want to buy it.

Clearly there’s a mismatch here. There could be many reasons for it, but as a humble writer rather than an industry insider I wouldn’t know.

All I can say is it doesn’t bode well for the story I’m pitching. Or for my current WIP which has a definite YA feel to it – Maybe I’d be better off pitching it as Adult instead!

Thinking about Self Publishing

The time has come when I’m starting to think about self-publishing as a serious option for some of my novels.

I write what I love to write. I write the books I would like to read that I can’t find on the shelves. I know there’s no point in following trends and so I don’t. But I’m also aware that the market is very trend driven, and so there is a large element of luck involved – if you hit the right trend at the right time then your book will sell. If not it won’t.

Making the decision to self publish is a big commitment. I have to be prepared to put in the effort, to make sure the product I put into the market is as good as it possibly can be. And I have to be prepared to put in the time and money to do this.

I also know I’m unlikely to make any profit. Without the weight of the marketing and publicity departments of a trade publisher my reach will be small, unlikely to extend far beyond my own circle of contacts. I have to be prepared for that fact that it probably won’t sell.

I’m also aware that the best way to market a book is to bring out another book. For this reason I’m going to hold fire on self publishing for now. I’m going to wait for two things:

1. Having the time to dedicate myself to this project properly.
2. Having a portfolio of books to follow up with.

I’m not going to try to self publish my MG books. I’m going to go with my SF thrillers. I have one in a good complete state, one that needs some reworking and two that are in progress, but not very far.

So I need to get on with some writing, and get on with some research into what I need to do in order to give them the best chance I can.

Any tips or resources that you can share please do.

And I will share my progress with you on this blog.

A Short Story Collection

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been busy pulling a number of my short stories together into a collection. This is something I’ve been thinking of doing for a while, especially since a good number have already been published but have now gone out of print. I originally thought I might self-publish them, but then a friend of mine told me about a publisher he had been doing some work with, CFZ publishing. Like many small publishers they are quite niche, but their niche is one that fits well my style of fiction. So I’m going to give them a try.

But pulling your short stories together into a collection isn’t such an easy task, and here are a couple of things I’ve had to take into account:

Running order: This is a tricky one. The stories need to be sufficiently distinct from the ones they are adjacent to but not so different as to be jarring. I also wanted to mix up the previously published with the new material.

Opening stories: These are the ones that will appear on the kindle ‘look inside’ option and will determine whether the reader clicks the buy button or not. Therefore they need to give a good representation of the anthology and also be some of my better stories.

Final story: The collection needs to finish on a high note so the final story needs to pack a punch. This was quite easy. I have a piece of flash fiction that I feel rounds off the collection quite well.

Character names: I never noticed before that I have a tendency to reuse names. So for example where I had two stories featuring a character called Lucy, one of these needed to be changed, otherwise the reader might think the characters and the two stories are connected.

Editing: Some of my earlier stories, when I re-read them, needed a bit of tidying up since my writing has improved a lot over the years. Even some that have previously been published!

Title: Finally what should I call my collection? I thought about using the title from one of my short stories but none really stood out. Then my friend suggested I use the title from this blog. It is certainly fitting with the style of stories – science fiction and mild horror that could well be described as ‘weird fiction’, as well as echoing the cryptozoological bent of the publisher. So The Scribbling Seaserpent it shall be.

Early days yet – but I’ll keep you up to date with developments.

Submitting Short Stories - A Few Tips

I’ve been sending short stories out for a while now to various genre fiction markets, mostly SciFi and Horror and thought I would share a couple of tips I’ve picked up along the way.

1. Short story editors are more likely to give feedback on why they reject a story than Agents are for longer fiction. Some magazines in particular will try to comment on everything they reject. Always remember, it is just their opinion, but if you find them repeatedly saying the same thing then perhaps it is time to take the story out of circulation and revise it.
2. Stories can be rejected for lots of reasons, not necessarily the writing at all. Each magazine has it’s own particular style and niche and if your story doesn’t fit with that they won’t take it, even if it’s the best story in the world. So don’t be disheartened, keep sending them out, but do your research.
3. Keep and eye out for new magazine markets – if you get in early you could well stand a better chance of selling them something, before they begin to get swamped with accepted material. And if that magazine then goes on to carve out a niche for itself and become well known then you’ve a decent little publishing credit under your belt.
4. If an editor asks you to send them something else then do it – they don’t say that unless they mean it. They clearly like your writing style even if that particular story wasn’t a good fit for them.
5. Once you sell something to someone then keep submitting to them. If they’ve published you once there’s a good chance they’ll take something of yours again.
6. Here is a useful link from Strange Horizons that lists stories and plots that editors see all the time and are best avoided.
7. And here is another useful article from the Arkham Tales website on the secret art of wooing editors.
8. And finally, good luck.

Short Stories - Market Resources

Since this is a subject that often comes up I thought I would mention some of the online market resources I use when working out where to submit my short fiction.

I’ll start with two very useful market listing websites.

The first of these, Ralan.com, is generally my first port of call. Markets are listed according to pay rate with pro markets clearly marked. There are also separate pages from humour, books, anthologies and even an interesting little section called ‘Adult’. At the top of each page any new markets are listed along with any recent market updates.

Duotrope is another very useful market listing website with a nifty little search facility covering a broad spectrum of genres. It is particularly useful for its response time statistics – always good to know when you submit somewhere that it’s not going to end up sitting in the slush for over a year.

The Black Hole also lists response times, but doesn’t seem to have quite as much data as Duotrope, still, it’s another useful resource, as is Black Hole Extensions which gives the most recent responses, since some magazines seem to send them out in batches.

Storypilot is another market listing website with a search facility, specifically for Science Fiction, fantasy and horror markets. The search results link directly to the websites of the magazines that fit your specifications. However this site does not seem to be kept as up to date as the other two and lacks the response time data of Duotrope.

Of course I’m sure these aren’t the only ones, and if anyone reading this knows of any other particularly useful resources of this ilk do let me know.

Researching the Market - Short Fiction

Selling short fiction is much like selling anything else – you have to research your market, in this case the numerous small press magazines, e-zines and podcasts that all publish genre fiction.

Looking at their submission guidelines gives you some idea – some ask for Hard SF, some for Fantasy, some for Horror. But the reality is far more subtle than that. Within each genre each magazine has its own unique distinctive flavour, and with a successful magazine this enables it to carve out its own specific niche in the market.

But how do you identify that certain something that a magazine is looking for? Well the obvious answer is to read the magazine – easy with e-zines that are free to download – in fact there’s simply to excuse for not researching these properly - but for the struggling writer it’s just not viable to subscribe to every single one of the rest. So how else can we research the market without spending too much money? (Is this my Scottish blood showing through?)

Well one of the methods I use is to read reviews, although this really only gives a slightly better idea of genre and theme. Another thing worth watching out for is that sometimes, if a story is up for an award, a magazine will make it freely available on their website. Another method I’ve used is to buy a short story collection, one of those ‘best of’ anthologies perhaps, and then look at where the individual stories first appeared. And of course, when sending stuff out, it’s worth taking note where your stories are getting hold notices since these are the markets that your work clearly fits best.

And when you make a sale? That’s when you got it right.

Happy submitting.