More, More, More!

The other night, I received the excellent news that my story, “Laura and Ollie,” was accepted for publication in the next issue of The First Line, a really cool journal where all the stories published all start with the same line. I’m incredibly excited to have been chosen and to see what other twists on the first line other authors gave it, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re a paying market, too. So I finally got accepted into my first paying journal, and it feels good. Really good. Really, really good. So good that I feel the great desire to scribble down a million more stories and send them off to a million more journals in the hope of being published again. This publishing thing is so addicting.

There’s just one major issue with this, and that’s the fact that I have a damn book I’m supposed to be publishing first. Granted, I finally got my shit together and edits on Heartless are going fairly smooth, but I can’t let myself be distracted by the lure of other projects, small as they may be. I still have a good handful of stories floating around in “in-progress” land, so I just need to slow my roll and focus on the task at hand.

And then once Heartless is off to beta readers, then I’ll submit to every journal and contest in my reach, mwa ha ha.

Self-publishing and releasing my own books has been an incredible experience, but there’s a certain special feeling when you send something out and someone else likes it enough to publish it. Two short stories in two journals so far this year is even more exciting to me than the two books I know I’ll release myself this year. The great thing is that all of it is getting my name out there, all of it is setting me up for further success, and it’s so, so rewarding (and encouraging!) to have some of my work finally pay off (figuratively as well as literally).

Keep an eye out for the next issue of The First Line (though you know I’ll be pimping that shit out once it’s released.