Sanda Seamans over at Shotgun Honey!

If you are not familiar with Sandra Seamans, who is not only a writer, but a tireless promoter of writers and writing, you should be. Her blog, My Little Corner, is a wealth of information and is updated (big thanks, Sandra) almost daily.

Very happy to let you know that she has a very good story, Notes On Friday Night, on display over at the Shotgun Honey site. Big congrats to Sandra!

You can check out her story HERE

And make it a point to check out Sandtra's blog HERE

Sandra Seamans @ Do Some Damage

If I had to pick a blog that helps writers more than any other blog, I would have to go with Sandra Seamans'. It is a tremendous site and is updated all the time with valuable info of all kinds. A big thank you for this Sandra.  You should surely check out an interview with her that is featured over at the Do Some Damage site to find out more about Sandra, her blog, writing, and especially her new story collection COLD RIFFS, which is pictured above. Best of luck, Sandra, you are on of the good ones!

You can find the interview HERE

A Lyric By Any Other Name

Found the Be Here Now cd by Oasis while cleaning out a TV cabinet last week and have beeen listening to it alot. The song in the video clip is "My Big Mouth" and is my favorite on the disc There a line in it that goes:

"I'll put on my shoes as I'm walking slowly down the hall of fame". 

This song sparked a couple ideas for a story I'm working on now, mainly because I misinterpreted the above lyric as  "You can hold my shoes as I'm walking slowly down the hall of fame", which I think sounds even cooler. Lots of ideas came from that simple mistake. Lucky I have not blown out the speakers in my Jeep, listening to it, but this is one of those 'crank it up' type of songs.

Thanks to Sandra Seamans' blog, I found very helpful post by Alan Rinzler on how to publish your short stories to some new paying markets. It seems like the short is really making a comeback. Check it out HERE

Holiday's Were Made For...Working!

Man, has it been hectic lately. Spent the Memorial Day long weekend working and have to do the same Fourth of July. The Man even has us scheduled for next Memorial Day. But hey, I got's to pay he bills, and considering the state of the economy, I ain't gonna complain and I'm glad to have a job. The youth lacrosse season wraps up this weekend, so putting away the coaches hat is going to free up a good chunk of time.

Through it all, I was able to write and submit a 3,400 word short for Naomi Johnson's Watery Grave Invitational. I called it "Renegades of Pain" and I'm really happy with it. BIG TIME thanks to Naomi for hosting it and just as much thanks to Sanda Seamans' blog for tipping me off to it, at the eleveneth hour. I chipped away on this one from 10pm to 1am when I could and loved every minute of it. For whatever reason, I love writing under pressure. I'm always writing down small idea's for stories, or using real life situations to motivate me. For this one I combined two.

- Getting ripped off big time, when I bought my wife a flat iron for Mother's Day.
-That old Charms Lollipop commercial with the kid asking the owl how many licks it takes to get to the center of the pop.

From those two things, somehow, I built a story around them.

If you are looking for a way cool challenge, check out Steve Weddle's post today over at Do Some Damage. Summertime & Crime. I am so all over this as both are two of my fav subjects. Details HERE

Even though I have not been posting lately, I've still been following lots of blogs, reading some great posts and stories, and commenting when I can. There is so much talent out there, it is insane.

Stephen King's Take on the Short Story

Thanks to Sandra Seamans' excellent blog My Little Corner, which is a tremendous resource to keep up to date on what is happening in the publishing world, especially short fiction, I found Stephen King's thoughts on the state of the short story. It was published in The Atlantic magazine HERE. It is well worthe a read.

What really caught my attention was this comment:

"And there are little magazines that publish in that sense -- but a lot of the people who read those magazines are only reading them to see what they publish so that they can publish their own stories".

I know a lot of the writers I follow and read are all published in these types of small press or e-zine sites and blogs. There is no pay usually and if you did get a few bucks for a short, it would be a great win. So, is there any truth to SK's comment or has he become so successful and out of touch with "the little guy" that he's got his head up his ass? Remember, he used to submit soft-core porn stories to skin mags when he first started out, and I'm thinking he might have only bought them to see his own stories in print.

E-Zines, Print Mags, and Anthologies...Oh My (Thanks Sandra Seamans)

Much to the dismay of my second novel (30K words so far), I have been really engrossed in both reading and writing the short / flash story format. Why? Because I absolutley love it. Minimal time to invest and a quick return on investment.

I've been trying to get up the guts to submit to the crime / horror e-zine, print, anthology market, and nothing helps more than a central place where you can find out where such things exist.

I found exactly what I was looking for over at Sandra Seamans' blog, "My Little Corner". You can check it out HERE

I'm still trying to make a crime story out of Rumplestiltskin for the fairytale challenge contest, and have a 2K word story submitted to the Red Adept site, that if it gets picked, will end up in an anthology sponsored by J.A Konrath. The PG rating forced me to come up with something non-crime related, and I took a  sentimantal, heart string pulling angle with it. We shall see.