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This is a continuation of my blogging here at WdC |
| ONE HUNDRED! So, I made a small announcement on the Newsfeed, but I wanted to go into it in a little more depth. I recently saw my one hundredth short story traditionally published, in Tales From The Crosstimbers, Winter 2025 edition. I have signed contracts for three more stories, so it does not end here, but one hundred is what I want to focus on. So… one hundred. It’s just a number, but humans like patterns and numbers have meaning. I sold my first short story, that I can officially recognise (I never saw the 1988 one in print), in 2002-ish. So, that’s 23 years. I didn’t sell from 2015 to 2017 because of personal issues. But, as an average, it’s a little over 4 stories a year; taking out those 3 years, it’s 5 stories a year. I have been told that is reasonably good. The length ran from a heap of drabbles (100 words) to just under 10k words. Now, after having my first book published, I stopped setting writing goals for myself. I just write. Even NaNoWriMo didn’t help; in 2024 I wrote over 160k words in the month. A novel, a novella, a film script, 2 short stories and 2 poems in 30 days. Goals didn’t mean a lot. But in the middle of 2024, I sold 5 short stories in a month or so. My statistics on Excel (yes, Excel; don’t judge) informed me that that would break me into a hundred by 2027 at my then current rate of sales. Then 13 O’Clock Press died, and 3 of those stories were subsequently not going to be published. 100 was a nice goal, but seemed years away. BUT! 2024 saw my sales increase, and come the start of 2025 and I was suddenly only 6 or 7 stories away from the mark. I had a goal. I started submitting like crazy. I wanted to reach this goal in 2026. But sales came… and suddenly, here I am, a month shy of 2026 and I have 100 short stories traditionally published, with contracts signed for three more… Why do I keep saying traditionally published? To be traditionally published, someone has to accept your story. You have to please an editor, a publisher and a slush pile reader. Heaps of people have probably self-published hundreds of short stories; my archives have over 1000 unpublished short stories, so I could easily have hundreds (plural) out there. But, as I have said before, if it isn’t good enough for a publisher, it’s not good enough for the public. In. My. Opinion. I think that is a distinction. Literally anyone can self-publish if they have the money. Not just anyone can be trad published. Just sayin’… but regular readers know this about me. Anywho, if you go to
you can get a copy of the magazine and see my rather weird comedy-scifi tale, my 100th trad published story: ‘Big Black Thing Of Doom’. I feel like I might have finally achieved something as a writer… |
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