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How Tough is the Competition in Traditional Anthologies? It can be pretty tough. I received one of those nice rejection emails just a few days ago from the editor of an anthology. Apologizing first for the slow response. Said I didn’t quite make the mix he wanted for the stories he finally chose. Maybe it was true, I'll believe him so that I feel better. He also mentioned that he had 659 submissions. Yeah, it can be pretty tough. Write, submit, and repeat. |
The Most Difficult Genre? Recently, I submitted a story in response to a submission call for a crime or mystery story set in another time period (preferably the past). I like writing in these genres, but I forgot how hard it is to write in another time period. I chose the days following the assassination of President McKinley, 1901, in Buffalo, New York. I made the assassination relevant to the story. That puts this story somewhere within the Historical Fiction genre. I like researching for writing, but I was sick of doing research before I finished this project. If you would like any files on the assassination, autopsy, the assassin, 1901 Buffalo . . . just let me know. I think Historical Fiction may be the most difficult fiction genre to write in, as it has all of the challenges of any other genre, and the research to get the historical context right is very demanding. Any thoughts? |
| Historical fiction is definitely tough. I also find hard science fiction really difficult for the same reason; all of that scientific research and knowledge that's required to not just be plausible in the story, but also to meet the expectations of readers who like reading hard science fiction precisely for that realism and specificity. |
Jeff  - Interesting point about hard scifi; as someone with undergradute and graduate degrees in engineering and an intense interest in physics I tend to take that for granted because I like it so much. |
Hiding Who You Really Are A short story (WC 1900) dedicated to anyone who has ever felt the need to hide any part of their identity. Give it a read if you have time and let me know what you think.
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Book Scan Data Amazon Author has a pretty cool feature, they get a download from Bookscan Weekly sales which gets data from many booksellers on physical books. It tracks individual books as well as the total for all published books sold for a one-week period. This plot is for all my traditionally published books, novels, and anthologies. The y-axis legend is not on the image. A thousand units for each major grid line on this graph  . I’m pretty sure that’s correct. Or was it one hundred thousand per grid line? |
Submit Your Worst Story Not exactly what the publisher is asking for, but it is interesting. I have seen many unusual calls for submissions for short stories. This might be the most unusual. The submission call starts: Concept: SFF Stories that met with many rejections before being published. This can include both reprint or original stories. In either case, short stories (<7,500 words) must have been rejected at least 20 times. (Bold is in the original) A few of what I think are some of my best stories have been rejected several times, but not twenty. So, rejections are not necessarily an indicator of bad stories. Here is the link if you’ve got a story you would like to submit. https://www.books.metaphorosis.com/calls/ |
Take the Big Mysteries in Physics Survey The American Physical Society is a premier professional organization for physicists in many fields. Their professional journal, The Physical Review, publishes many groundbreaking discoveries and revelations in science, and Physics Magazine publishes summaries that non-experts can comprehend. Are you interested in Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Quantum Gravity, Black Holes . . . Take their survey and give your thoughts on the current mysteries of the universe. Might give you an idea for a new story. SURVEY LINK HERE https://physics.aps.org/articles/v18/140 |
Submission Deadline Aug 11 (Without Reading Glasses) I have been working on a story, right around 4,000 words well within the limit of 7000 words. My trusty writing journal had the details along with other open submissions I have been tracking. Open June 15 to August 11 I spent the last three days doing some final polishing, and today I went back to the publisher’s website and saw. open June 15-August 1! It was basically ready on time, double drats as Charlie Brown would say.: I’m pretty sure I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses when I copied down the submission details and August 1! became August 11. |
Real Life Imitating Fiction Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and became Spider-Man. Not a spider, but a similar setup in real life. Workers at the Savannah River nuclear site discovered a wasp’s nest, ten times more radioactive than allowed by federal regulations. Savannah River produced materials for nuclear weapons and has highly radioactive waste stored on site. Now for the really interesting part. After spraying the nest with poison, workers reported that they did not find any wasps. So where are they? If you live anywhere near Aiken, South Carolina, and you get stung by a wasp. Think positive and hope for some superpowers. Unless it’s a horror story. A Link to AP Story https://www.apnews.com/article/radioactive-wasp-nest-savannah-river-site-701e791... |
Ned  - With radioactive decay would that mean it was even more radioactive when the wasps were there? Now mutations passed on to offspring that grow to enormous proportion. |
A Most Welcoming Community Since joining this site, I have often been struck by the friendly nature of this virtual community. It felt nice today when I saw an email that I had been chosen as a preferred author. Then the barrage of congratulations and well-wishes from other WDC members was quite something. Definitely a friendly place to spend some time. |
How Far Do You Travel Each Night as You Sleep? Not metaphorically or metaphysically. Actual physical movement. If you have done much long-distance flying, you have had the experience during a smooth flight when motion is imperceptible as you zip through the sky at more than 600 miles per hour. During constant velocity flight without acceleration or bumps. Earth seems rigid and solid, the ground beneath our homes solid, certainly no perception of motion as you lie down in bed for a good night's sleep. We all know the Earth rotates on an axis, giving us our days, and the Earth circles the sun, giving us a year. How fast does the Earth move around the sun? Around 67,1000 miles per hour. So, after a good eight hours' sleep, you have traveled about 536,800 miles along the circular orbit of our home planet. We will stick with a nice 8 hours of sleep to continue this journey. We aren't done yet. That’s only a fraction of your nightly travel. Our entire solar system orbits the galactic center of our home galaxy. Speed? Roughly 447,000 miles per hour. It takes our solar system more than 200 million years to complete a circuit around its galactic orbit. When you wake up each morning, you find yourself more than 3 million miles from where you went to sleep. You wake up each morning at a point in space (or space-time) that no human has ever occupied. We will stop there and ignore the movement of our galaxy. |
Backyard Roman Coliseum This is our south garden, the picture is a few years old and there are thicker plants now and a grapevine along one of the walls. The gazebo is a great place to do some plotting and story outlines. Taking care of the weeds and keeping things clean is good exercise for someone my age. Anyway, this year there have been more big black ants, and I felt one climbing up my leg as I was weeding next to the fish pond this spring. I swatted it off and tossed it into the pond. I watched as the fish swarmed, and finally, a multicolored fish gulped it down. Since then, I have been tossing in ants at a regular rate and watching as the fish swarm. The ants can make it to the wall and climb out. Surface tension allows them to sort of float swim. My personal Roman coliseum, and somehow I can’t quite seem to feel guilty. The fish I feel a mild attachment to, the barbarian black ants not so much. |
Shocking Praise for My Writing. Who Wrote it? I will occasionally search for ‘Damon Nomad Author ' on search engines, especially after book launches. It’s fun to see where my pen name pops up and maybe a gauge around a launch. I found a review of one of my stories on a university professor’s website. I posted about that; that’s another story. Anyway, the Bing search engine gave a summary including this: Damon Nomad is a versatile writer who has gained recognition for his contributions to various literary forms . . . blah. . blah. . and then this: Damon Nomad continues to engage readers with his thought-provoking narratives and unique insights, making him a notable figure in contemporary literature. Really? I would never write such a wild and fantastically unrealistic claim. Who would? Well, nobody. There are embedded links to a publisher bio for me, who published one of my stories, and Amazon, where I have an author's website. There is no absurd praise like what is in this summary in either place. My best guess is that an AI engine created this summary based on what it found searching for “Damon Nomad Author”. My most effusive critic is an AI engine. So something good has come from AI.  That’s what I get for searching my pen name. |
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Congratulations on your promotion! 
It is worth remembering (and I need to remind myself of this all the time) it does not mean your story is bad, just that it does not fit what they were after.
Get beta readers, trust what they say, get editors, make your work the best it can be to increase your odds. That's about all I can offer.