Short Story Acceptance! "The Witch in the Woods Who Sold the Spark"

I'm delighted to announce that my fantasy folktale "The Witch in the Woods Who Sold the Spark" has been accepted by Crow & Cross Keys for publication sometime around January 2023! 

There are foxes and magic and eggs and, of course, a witch living in the woods. More details coming soon!

NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2022 Update

The NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge is underway. The results for the first round came out recently, which will be added to the second round. I posted about my RomCom story and more details on how this challenge works in a previous post: NYCM Update.

I got 14th place for my RomCom story, so I received 2 points for that round. The second round assignments were released and I was much happier with my prompts:

GENRE: Suspense

LOCATION: A cave

OBJECT: A selfie stick

The story I wrote in less than 48 hours took a bit of a Sci Fi turn, so I hope that doesn't hurt me with the judges. But I've also realized that I have two goals with doing these NYCM Challenges:

1. To stretch my writing muscles in genres that I'm not skilled at.

2. To create some new stories that could eventually be submitted for publication. (Sometimes this will mean revising the stories after the contest to make them better, of course, and more speculative if needed.)

Here's the title and synopsis of my flash (under 1000 words) Suspense story:

Title: "The Heat From Beneath"

Synopsis: While researching an unusual source of heat in an underwater cave, a pair of marine archeologists encounter trouble.

The results will be out in October and only the top 5 point-earners will advance.

SFWA and Codex Memberships!

Two of my career goals were met at the end of July: joining SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, and Codex, an online community for "pro-level speculative fiction writers." I'm so thrilled that my story sales this year have pushed me to the next level where I could qualify for these groups. I'm looking forward to improving my writing and getting more stories published in the future!