122 And Submission Stats

Just sent out story 122, a flash piece called One With Everything. Another one I didn't plan on, but there you go. Only 49 stories to go this year and only 878 more before I'm fifty! 123 is waiting in the wings, I just need Tony to send a little British postage my way. At least I think it's 123. I thought it was 122 until a couple hours ago.

That was my 603rd submission. On the occasion of my 600th submission the other night, I looked over my submissions and mentioned a few that were important to me on Twitter. Here they are again, with some extra info, for those of you that care:

* I sent out my first submission on May 8th, 1991. Almost 19 years ago.That story was called Lives and Times (Number 1 in the canon, of course). The style of the story crawled out of the 1950's and the writing was poor, of course. I still think the idea is cool enough that I won't spill it here in case I want to reuse it in the future.

I sent it to Amazing Stories. I had picked up my first copy of Amazing in high school and there was an address therein to send for submission guidelines. I was excited to receive that little pamphlet and that's what sparked my interest in writing for science fiction mags. My first dream was to be published in Amazing. That dream was the first of many to go down the shitter. :D The most wonderful thing about Amazing was that they were a major magazine that would give you feedback on your story. Even the first story you ever wrote. Even if they had to tear out your intestines and stomp on them. I got a few rejections from an assistant editor before they folded and she was deliciously ruthless. "Why don't don't they just stick a knife in you?" my then girlfriend, later former wife asked. I wish I had kept those particular rejections. They probably wouldn't look nearly as bad to me today as they felt back then.

* Made my first sale with submission 115. October 1st, 1998. Got paid in copies (5). That was a story called Better Than Anything (Story number 6), a superhero story that I still like, though I haven't read it in a long time. It was for a publication called Between the Leaves that Barnes & Noble published, of stories written by Barnes & Noble employees. I was working for B. Dalton Booksellers then, which was owned by B&N. I had already amassed a pile of rejections by that time and although they didn't pay money, I sent the story in, because I figured if I couldn't get into that book, then I super-sucked as a writer. I'm happy that I didn't super-suck. If you guys remind me, I'll post the story on this blog as it's out of print now.

* My first (and so far only) pro sale was submission 383. March 2nd, 2007. That was Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range (Story 35), published in Chiaroscuro. I created this story as a lark at work. I was working at the now defunct Linens N Things at the time. We had these teddy bear greeting cards at a register no one used, so the cards never sold. The cards had sepia-toned photos of teddy bears on them. The bear on one card looked like a pioneer sitting in front of a cabin. It looked very lonely out there by itself and I wondered what kind of horrors lurked outside of that cabin when the night fell. I wrote the first draft of the flash fiction story on a piece of receipt tape as I walked the store's aisles. I was supposed to be managing something I think, but in the long run, the story proved a much better use of my forty-five minutes.

I sent the story around and nearly wet myself with glee when I got a phone call from Harper's (yes, that Harper's) about it. It was an intern who told me that Harper's didn't publish micro-fiction, but if I could expand on the story they'd love to see the result. He also told me they loved the opening so much they posted it up on their bulletin board in the office. Harper's! You are probably more astonished by the fact that I'd have the balls to send the story there, than the fact that they asked for a rewrite. You know what they say about no guts. Needless to say, I wrote the shit out of that story. Also needless to say, they rejected it.

It soon made its way to Chiaroscuro and I considered it a long shot, because Chiaroscuro is a horror zine, but from the bears view that story was pure horror. It's no longer up at that site, because they only run stories for about 15 months, but read the zine anyway. You can listen to the audio version of the teddy story at Cossmass Infinities (and while you're there, check out their other episodes, because it's a great podcast with awesome theme music).

* I hope to hit submission 700 by the end of this year. I better hustle! I actually think my submission goal for this year was 200 submissions, so I should hit number 787 by the end of the year.

Now, back to fiction.

Podcasts And Goals

Episode 2 of the Cossmass Infinities podcast is live and waiting for you to consume it. I haven't listened yet, but it's waiting in line on my iPod. The Strange Affair of the Martian Engine by Joshua Reynolds can be found here: http://cossmass.co.uk/infinities/2. Good title! Cossmass Infinities, as you might recall, are the fine people who did an audio version of my Teddy Bear story last month. Subscribe if you haven't already.

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I've got about twenty-three slots filled right now for my 52 in 2010 goal. Right now I'm mining old ideas that have been lounging around on my hard drive for years and not pulling their own weight. I don't know about you other writers out there, but I've got literally hundreds of ideas sitting on my computer at any given time. Many of them are crap, but there are stories that can be coaxed out of some of them. I'm going through my old Wordperfect files, converting them through Zamzar. It's a bit of a hassle, but it's free and it gets the job done. If I could find my Wordperfect disc which is hiding somewhere under the many piles of stuff in my home, I'd pop it in and run it right now, because I love Wordperfect. If any of you know how I could convert my Pages files (from Apple's iWork suite) on the cheap to Word documents or even .rtf, I'd appreciate it if you would share the knowledge.

I think I'll come up with more than fifty-two potential stories in case some of them become unworkable. Also, I'm going to need lots of ideas for next year and the years to come, because if I'm going to reach The One-Thousand by fifty, I'm going to have to average over one-hundred stories a year after this year. Holy crap!

Anyway, I'm going to be coming up with lots of new ideas as well as refurbishing old ones. The best way I've found to come up with story ideas is to write flash-fiction stories of about 250 words. If an idea isn't workable as a proper short story, you haven't wasted much time with it. If it is, you just expand it. Some of my favorite stories grew this way. Try it.

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The latest StarShipSofa features Tony's new monthly interview segment, this time with Lucius Shepard.

Aural Delights No 119 John W Campbell Jr vs Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Editorial: StarShipSofa Interrogation by Tony C Smith

SF Weekly News: Tony C Smith

Main Fiction: The Last Evolution by John W Campbell Jr

StarShipSofa Interrogation: Lucius Shepard

Main Fiction: Knotwork by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Narrators: J.J. Campanella Christie Yant

Fluff And Buttons On Cossmass Infinities

2010 is off to an awesome start for me! My story Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range now lives as an audio production on the brand new podcast, Cossmass Infinities. Go listen to it here (The audio is at the bottom of the page):

http://cossmass.co.uk/infinities/1

The story's read by Paul W. Campbell who narrated my story Brothers and Sisters All on the StarShipSofa podcast. Now you can imagine my bears in little kilts. Celebrate your new year with the horrible destruction of cute stuffed animals!

The Bears Shall Growl

This is nifty! Paul W. Campbell's upcoming podcast, Cossmass Infinities, will be doing an audio version of my story Fluff and Buttons on the Teddy Bear Range next year. Yay! Paul narrated my story Brothers and Sisters All on StarShipSofa's Aural Delights podcast earlier this year and I thought he did a wonderful job. Can't wait to hear what he does with the bears. I'll let you guys know when it's available.