I FINALLY SENT IN my registration and made my plane reservations this past week for the May 2000 World Horror Convention in Denver. I’m pretty excited — this is only going to be the second national convention I’ve attended (the first was the 1997 World Fantasy Convention here in Chicago).
I’m looking forward to meeting a lot of the writers and editors that I’ve corresponded with via e-mail over the past few years. I’m also hoping the convention will help me with a lot of projects that I have in the works this year — from my collection of erotic horror stories Cage of Bones and Other Deadly Obsessions coming out this summer from Delirium Books to my YA novel A Gathering of Goblins (currently on the shopping block) to my first horror novel, The Cliff, which I hope to begin marketing this year as well.
I finally decided to take a good look at my story submissions log today to see how I fared in 1999 compared to previous years. Turns out I had a great year for fiction sales, though I didn’t see a lot actually published last year. See my Totals table below if you’re interested.
This has been a month to celebrate for me, fiction-wise. I received a check for “Dragon’s Teeth,” the fourth tale in my occasional “goblin” series from Realities Escape magazine. At 3 cents a word, it qualifies as my first “pro rate” sale of fiction. The first three goblin tales appeared in the mid-’90s in Sirius Visions, and over Christmas I finished a 5th segment, a goblin novella which wraps up the series (or at least part one of it!). I’m currently shopping the collected tales around as a YA novel — the stories were written serially, so they work just as well as a linear book as they do as five separate tales.
I also recently sold one of the first stories I ever tried to write — a “wild talent” science fiction tale called “Callinda.” It’s a story I started in high school but didn’t brush off and finish until 4-5 years ago. It’s been picked up by an anthology called Snakebite from the publisher of Dead Moon Tales, which is also publishing one of my other early stories, “Preserve.” For information on either publication, e-mail editor Jim Pope.
SHORT FICTION SALES – UPDATED AT END OF 2001
2001 TOTALS:
STORIES SOLD: 9
PUBLISHED: 5
REJECTED: 21
2000 TOTALS:
STORIES SOLD: 8
PUBLISHED: 7
REJECTED: 25
1999 TOTALS:
STORIES SOLD: 9
PUBLISHED: 3
REJECTED: 50
1998 TOTALS:
STORIES SOLD: 6
PUBLISHED: 6
REJECTED: 47
1997 TOTALS:
STORIES SOLD: 6
PUBLISHED: 3
REJECTED: 78
CAREER TOTALS
1993-2001:
STORIES SOLD: 88
PUBLISHED: 50
REJECTIONS: 570
