Poor Little Bedraggled Things

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.

The AGM

Well last night was the Writers Circle AGM and I’ve been duly voted in as Chairman for another year. It’s certainly a role I enjoy.

The group as a whole keeps expanding. We’ve had quite a few new members join us, and what with our forthcoming Prose café’s and the Booker debate in October, we have a fantastic programme for the coming year and we seem to be going from strength to strength!

The train project is going well, with more characters being added by the new members. And as for Gary Styles – my Used Car Salesman – he may be feeing rough now – but he’s no idea how bad things are going to get … (I’m feeling quite evil at the moment poor chap.)

Ruins and Adders

My eagerly awaited contributer's copy of Ruins Metropolis has finally arrived, and it is a thing of beauty. I've only been able to read a couple of the stories so far though, because it's been swiped by my 10 year old daughter - but not for long - once she's asleep I'll swipe it back...

And why do people keep saying that adders are getting rare? We saw another one today, just a little baby, slipping through the leaf litter by the side of the road. (Not a red one this time though - just normal colour.)

Shh - she's asleep - time to go and reclaim that book...

Snakes in the Heather

Today, while I was walking around Winfrith Heath at lunchtime, I spotted an adder - one of those young brick-red ones. I’ve never seen one that colour before and I head to look twice, but it was most definitely an adder. The bloke I share an office with tells me that these red adders are typical of this area. He’s seen quite a few of them this year so far. Needless to say I picked my way back over the heath with extra care!

And in writing news – Ruins Metropolis is now available from Amazon.co.uk as well as Amazon.com. Looks like it’s going to be an interesting read. There are quite a few names I recognise in the line up, which is as follows:

"Old World Magic" by Adele Cosgrove-Bray
"End" by Ahmed A. Khan
"Sumari's Solitude" by Alycia C. Cooke
"Mrs. Kelly's Ghosts" by Anna D. Allen
"City of the Dead" by Barton Paul Levenson
"A Haunting in Giza" by Brenta Blevins
"In Search of Camanac" by C.L. Holland
"Veilsight" by Camille Alexa
"For Sale: One Gold (plated) Eye Of Horus" by Chris Benton
"The Eye of Re-Atum" by Christine Poulsen
"By the Pool of the Blue Lotus" by Erin M. Hartshorn
"The Name and the Shadow" by Gene Stewart
"Seeker of the Dead" by Gerri Leen
"Goddess Reborn" by Gianna Robbins
"Chamber of Illusions" by H.F. Gibbard
"The Final Goodbye" by Heather Kuehl
"Amulet" by Jacqueline Seewald
"The Return of the Queen" by Jennifer Moore
"When Love Dies" by Jonathan Shipley
"Dancing On the Corpse of the World" by Jude-Marie Green
"Convergence" by K.L. Townsend
"Kehmet's Curse" by Kari Livingston
"In the precinct of Amun-Re" by Kate Kelly
"The Librarian of Talimbourne" by Kimberly Vandervort
"The Amulet of Passages" by Leslie Brown and Sarah Totton
"Children of the City" by Lyn McConchie
"The Memory" by Meg Swanton
"Panthanatos" by Megan Arkenberg
"Carrying Keptara" by R.F. Long
"Qui's Contract" by Ransom Noble
"The Great Sleep" by Rob Rosen
"The Tomb of Setankan" by Sarah Wagner
"Burning Stone" by Stephen Graham King
"The Deserted City" by Victoria Kennedy
"Haroeris's Favor" by Willis Couvillier

Ruins Metropolis - Now on Amazon

It's out!

Just had an e-mail from the editor to let me know that Ruins Metropolis is now up at Amazon.com and should be available from Amazon.co.uk fairly soon, as well as serveral other outlets.

Now all I need is for my contributers copy to arrive, so that I can see my story 'In the Precinct of Amun-re' in print, as well as read all the other stories and see what the other authors came up with. It's an exciting project, and an impressive line up. Hadley Rille are producing some lovely books. Long may it continue!

The Long Wait

Most of the short fiction markets I submit to are pretty good with their response times, but sometimes they seem to take an age.

At present my longest outstanding submission is with Dark Discoveries. They’ve now had it for 15 months and counting. When I queried them back in January they were only just getting round to their November 2006 submissions. Very frustrating since, when I submitted to them their response time was stated to be 6 months. Looking on Duotrope they’ve now got round to their January 2007 submissions. This is an awfully long time to have a story tied up with a market that, chances are, is probably going to reject it anyway. I don’t think I’ll be submitting to them again.

The other market that I’m waiting on is Dark Wisdom. Since I’ve got two stories tied up there I’ve bitten the bullet and e-mailed the editor to try to find out what’s happening. However, I’ve a lot more patience with this one since it is a SWFA pro market. The mere fact that they accepted my story in the first place was a huge boost to my confidence. So fingers crossed that it doesn’t fall foul of their restructuring.