A Link-Back
First things first, for those who read last week’s post about Children’s Stories, I posted my attempt on Thursday, and I’d love to hear what you think about it. Please take a look and let me know.
Even if you saw Thursday’s post when it first popped up, I would strongly recommend you nip back and look at it again. My friend, Sam Agro, heard about the story and created some original artwork to bring Sally to life. He’s very modest, but this picture was knocked together in less than 10 minutes and I personally think it’s fantastic! You can get a link to Sam’s blog from the post, and see more of his artwork and illustrations too.
Publication – success and failure
In Canada, Reader’s Digest’s August edition has hit the shelves, complete with the “Quick Fix” article, which features two of my Friday Fiction stories. I’m so excited to see my name in print.
And I’ve had two more rejections – both of them personal and ending with encouragement to submit again. Little Fiction said: “Your story was close to making our shortlist, if that’s any consolation — our decision was more or less based on how it was fitting with the rest of the pieces making up the compilation.”
Narrative Magazine commented: “We found many strengths to recommend your work and, overall, much to admire. We
regret, however, that [your story] is not quite right for us.”
Although I’m aware that a rejection is ultimately not a success, emails like that go a long way to making me feel like I’m getting somewhere with my writing and hopefully someday will have more acceptances to brag about.
Booker’s Seven – Progress report
I’ve once again knuckled down to editing the great Booker’s Seven project. I’m working on Brothers at the moment, a story of adventure and discovery. It’s off to my wonderful writing group, Moosemeat on Thursday to see what they think. Wish me luck!
elmowrites 
It sounds like you really just need to find the right homes for your pieces – which is, I think, a stunning success!
Thanks Chelsea – yeah, it all feels really encouraging at the moment!
There are a few podcasts out there that will pay authors – they tend to be for stories that would take 15-45 min to read; I know mainly of Sci Fi ones (http://www.escapepod.org http://www.starshipsofa.com/) – but both of those also have other podcasts in the same family (doing horror, fantasy, crime, action) and there may be others out there in a similar model.
Intriguing, I’ll have to look those up. Thanks Stumo!