Publication Notes -- Summer/Winter Sale

During the month of July, I will be participating in the Summer/Winter Sale at Smashwords. This means that my ebooks will be either available at a huge discount, and some will be free.

The following books will be available:

Fiction: Rope ($2), Die Laughing ($1), and Quick (free).

Poetry: Wrestling Light ($2), Three Laments ($1), Making Rounds (free), and Walking In Circles (free).

Personal Essays: They Live With You ($1.50)

These deals are only available at Smashwords. Use the coupon code SSW50 when checking out. 

Go here to see my profile and to read a little about each book. Thank you much for supporting my work. And if you like it, spread the word!

Publication Notes – July 2010

Yesterday, the first edition of Rubber Lemon appeared online and it contains my story “Promise” (page 21). This is something I composed many years ago, and while time usually cools any positive thoughts I have about my work, this is one story I’ve always been a bit proud of. It seems to have found a proper and interesting home.
A couple of my haiku of found places in Ambrosia: Journal of Fine Haiku (Issue 5, page 49) and Trapeze Magazine.
“The Insomnia War” has been published in Flutter (Volume 5, Issue 6).
That appears to be all for now, but I find I send out something or another every week or so, and though I’ve been very busy this summer, I have found time to actually write and not just write about writing.

Publication Notes – June 2010

Since the summer has begun, I have, in greater earnest been sending material out, including some book length manuscripts. Have even collected a few rejections already. Wow! The Internet is speedy! However, a couple pieces have found homes.
“The Dog Barked” has been published at sillymess. No payment,  but I’m glad to have my work out there. It is a flash fiction piece I think I wrote sometime last year.
My poem “The Insomnia War” also is soon to be  published. It is expected to be in the July issue of Flutter, another online zine. Also, I recently heard from the editor of Trapeze Magazine and she will be publishing a twitter haiku on June 26.
These are kind of experimental, at least as far as the type of writing I usually do. Yet I’m proud to have written them and hope they generate some attention.
Other than that, I’m still working a little at a time at the novel, now with a new idea for the second half of the story, and on a non-fiction book of rants and meditations. As I am teaching online, I hope to contribute some time to an e-book I have wanted to write for school. At least I’ll think about it. Those are the plans. What will happen only God knows.

Publication Notes -- January 2010

The poem "Loafing" has been accepted by Poetry Quarterly. Proofs have come and gone and the issue should be at press soon.

My story "A Little Accident" is one of the featured stories this week at Sniplits. If you like to listen to your fiction, this is a good place.

Have tried to be a little more regular concerning submissions, and have been rewarded with the usual rejections. Hope the new semester doesn't get me too off track.

Have published two more books at Smashwords. Quick is a collection of short stories, all under 2,000 words in length. Most of these were written some time ago, but they are pieces I felt deserved more of an audience. They Live With You is a book of personal essays/memoirs wrapped around the theme of family.

Publication Notes -- October 2009

Okay, I really don't have much to say as far as submissions and rejections. I have received a couple of rejections and have not sent much out, due to busy-ness. But I do have other news. I have published a few things at Smashwords. This is a place for e-books, and you can find them in a variety of formats, so you can download them to your computer or other devices you like to read on. At present, I have four e-books available, one collection of stories and three volumes of poetry. Click here to see my profile. The books are:

Die Laughing includes three of my stories ("Jabba the Cop," "I've Been Killed Before," and "Except the Weather.") All are first person narratives, with the protagonist a young man (late teens/early twenties).
Three Laments is a collection of three suites (some poetry people call them "sequences," but I prefer the musical word). These were written as I went through some of the most difficult times of grief in my life.

Making Rounds is a sequence of its own, a collection of short tanka-like poems written during my time as a security guard.

Walking in Circles is a short collection of early poems.

I do have plans to offer a couple more in the future. I have a couple of longer stories that don't seem to fit any of the publications I typically try to publish in, but they are stories I happen to think deserve an audience. You can click on the covers below for information about any book or to read samples.

Publication Notes--July 2009

Well, it has been awhile since I updated here, and there isn't much to say. I went for some time not submitting work for a variety of reasons, mostly because I was very busy with school. Now that I am home for the summer, I have begun sending work out again.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that my poem "Cares" was published at Pond Ripples Magazine in their May issue. The nice editor had accepted another piece from a batch I had sent her, and I had assumed she was not interested in the other poems. Now I am in the unusual position of having to withdraw the piece from a submission elsewhere.

This morning read an email saying that my poem "Moments Before the Voice Lesson" has been accepted at The Houston Literary Review. Now I have to find a halfway decent picture to send them.

Wrestling Light (my Geocities website) is going away soon, so I have been making plans for a new site, one that will likely be a bit leaner. I plan to include a page to list publications with links to where my work can be found on the web. I'll place a link here when that happens. Feel free to drop me a line with any suggestions.

Publication Notes--December 2008

I haven't submitted a lot lately. With eight classes and a full family schedule, it has been hard to stick this year to my resolution of sending something out at least once a week. But that doesn't mean that the rejections have stopped. I even got one for a batch of poems I sent out two and a half years ago!

It is also strange that most of the recent publications have been with work I wrote some time ago. Electric Velocipede recently published my story "Partita for continuo". Click here for an excerpt. I'm fairly sure I wrote this piece when I was in graduate school.

And I realized how busy I've been when I discovered that another story, "Down at the Twenty-five," had been featured in the December 1 issue of Fiction at Work. I wrote this story some time in the years between graduation from college and the return to graduate school.

I honestly don't remember when I wrote "Three Short Lake Poems," but one of the parts (poems?) did find a home at Pond Ripples Magazine in the November issue. You do have to scroll down a ways to get to it, but I hope it is worth the trouble.

Here's hoping that despite the holidays and the Winter class, I'll be able to get back to writing everyday and sending more work out.

Publication notes

My story "A Little Accident" is the featured free story this week at Sniplits. I am also the featured author, so please log on, get yourself a story to listen to (feel free to buy my other story there if you are so inclined) and check out my fan page.

My poem "Father Lied" has just been published in the Freckles to Wrinkles. It looks like a fine little book, a nice gift for someone special.

Have been working on a new project, so I haven't sent out as much this month. Consequently, this is about all the news there is.

Publication Notes -- June 2007

"Peniel" (a poem) has been published at Farrago's Wainscot. In addition to actually getting paid, and finding a home for this piece (written several years ago), I get my work alongside Bryan Dietrich, a terrific poet I met in graduate school. I very much recommend his writing.

"Father Lied" (poem) has been accepted by Silver Boomers Anthology. The book will be Freckles to Wrinkles. Don't know just when this will come out.

"Partito for Continuo" (short story), which was accepted some time ago, should soon see the light of day in Electric Velocipede.

My chapbook Construction was recently rejected. I sent a different chapbook to the Burnside Review contest last week.

I've been a bit disappointed at the slow sales of my stories at Sniplits. One of many signs I've been reading lately about my writing career.

Gathered rejections recently from Poetry, Strong Verse, and Shakespeare's Monkey Review. Strong Verse took less than twenty-four hours to reject four poems, though the editor did have something kind to say about one of them.

School starts next week (well, the Summer II session), so I am hoping I will be able to get in the habit of submitting something everyday until then, and to make at least one submission a week while school is in session. Have been writing, working on a project of linked stories, and have managed to get about 500 words each that I do work. I'll take that as good news.

Publication Notes --April 2008

Probably the most significant news (perhaps the only news) is that two of my stories are now available on Sniplits. Click here and you can go directly to my page there. One of the stories, "A Little Accident" is one of the featured stories. "Puppy" is shorter and a little cheaper. (They charge based on the length of the story, all good prices for a story that is easy to download.) If you are reading and love to listen to stories, please consider buying one or more from this site. I'd, of course, be pleased if you got one of mine, but I think there is something there for pretty much every taste.

Looking forward to summer. Should get a little writing done and hopefully see a few more things out there.
Press release for Sniplits.
New on-line publisher offers DRM-free digital audio short stories
Sniplits’ beta test site offers downloadable MP3 audio shorts, author fan clubs and community forums
Batavia, Illinois – 1 May 2008 – Anyone with a digital music player, smart phone or laptop understands the hunger for new content. Now, with the beta site launch of Sniplits.com, there’s a new source for entertainment on the Internet. Sniplits is publishing audio short stories, packaged as DRM-free MP3 files and playable on virtually any device capable of playing digital music.
The Sniplits website has launched for beta testing with 85 audio short stories ranging from about two minutes in length to nearly an hour. The initial batch of stories represents the work of approximately 50 authors, and Sniplits will add additional stories and Fan Club pages as the site ramps up. The stories sell for $0.48 or $0.88 each, depending on length. In addition to mainstream and literary short stories, Sniplits offers mystery and suspense, speculative/science fiction and fantasy, romance, horror, adventure, sports, western, historical fiction and young adult stories.
“While they may be brief, there’s really nothing small about a short story,” says company founder, Anne Stuessy. “The best short stories are packed with compelling characters and storylines, with suspense, romance, heartbreak, humor, shivers and surprises. The need to make every word count, means that they can pack an astounding punch.”
“Our goal is to provide listeners with audio stories that are perfectly-sized for any pause in their day, from under two minutes to nearly an hour,” says Stuessy. “A ten-minute story might be perfect while waiting for an oil change, while a 30-minute story might be just the thing for a dentist appointment or lunch break.”
Sniplits publishes new as well as established authors and, unlike many markets, pays them for their work.
“It makes me crazy that we’re willing to pay millions to athletes right out of college or even high school, but expect our writers to pay their mortgages with little but the satisfaction of having written a good story,” says Stuessy.
Sniplits pays an advance of between $15 and $150 for stories between 100 and 8,000 words, and authors have the potential to receive royalty payments on net sales of their stories of between 30 to 50%.
“Unfortunately, the economics of print publishing today make it difficult for most short story publishers to offer much of anything in the way of compensation. Still,” Stuessy says, “many of those literary, university and genre-specific publishers play a – perhaps the – critical role in developing writers, and they do it very well. We’d like to support their work, and grow the audience for short stories in all formats, so we enable authors to link from Sniplits’ Fan Club pages to their work with print publishers. We also decided that Sniplits will not necessarily require first publication rights, but will only ask for audio rights and the right to distribute stories electronically. That might enable an author to have his story published in a literary print magazine, for example, and still have an audio version published by Sniplits.”
In addition to offering audio short stories, Sniplits plans to build out what it calls its “Open Mic” community, where members can connect with authors and each other. It includes Fan Club pages for authors and discussion forums. While anyone can visit and shop Sniplits, only Sniplits Members are allowed access to Fan Clubs where they can ask authors questions. Membership is also required to participate in community discussion forums. Membership is free and members are not required to purchase stories. Membership benefits include a free story each week.

Sniplits and the stylized logo are service marks of Stussi, Inc.

Publication Notes for December 2007

My story "Hard Light" has been published in the Winter 2007 issue of Mouth Full of Bullets. They have two versions, online and print. Mine is in the print edition, so you will have to purchase a copy to read it, but from what I have seen of the other stories in the collection, I suspect it is well worth the six bucks, especially if you like mystery fiction.

I am happy about this for a couple reasons. This is the first published appearance of a character I created years ago named Wilson Bell. My novel Don't Hang On is where Bell first came into being. Only a handful of people have read this book. (Eventually I will have time, energy, and inclination to revise it and try to get it published. Until then, you can read the first chapter here.) I hope people will like the story enough for me to think it worth my time to resurrect a character that many did not know had died. I wrote at least one more story with this character, but I have not been able to find it anywhere, either in hard copy or on a disc. Anyway, I hope you will read this story and enjoy it.


Espresso Fiction should publish my story "The Noisy Neighbor" on January 8. My online interview is there, but at the moment, I'm not sure how to access it.


Two of my stories, "Puppy" and "A Little Accident," should go live at Sniplits soon. I am working on getting information for them to do an author page.

Some time ago, I had a poem accepted at Poetry: stet. So far the webpage remains the same as it did in March of (now) last year. I'm begining to wonder if that poem is going to see the light of cyber day.

Publication Notes (October/November 2007)

A couple days ago, I received my contributor's copy of Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament, which includes my poem "Concurrences." Yesterday, I signed my contract for "Peniel" to be published next year at Farrago's Wainscot. This means three of the five sequences in my book Meditations in Progress (still a working title) will have been published. ("Damnation" was published minus one section when I was in graduate school in The Mayo Review. Now if I could just find someone willing to take a chance on the whole book.

My story "Except the Weather" was rejected by Popular Ink. I usually don't mention the rejections (other than I get plenty!), but the editors took the time to let me know what they liked about my story and what they felt needed to be "flushed out." I really appreciate the feedback.

Electric Velocipede has accepted my story "Partita for continuo." I received an email from the editor the other day stating it would be published Summer 2008.

Today, I got a note from Espresso Fiction that they want my story "The Noisy Neighbor." This is an interesting publication that sends story via email to subscribers. They want to publish my story on January 8. I need to do an online interview for them.

Hope to be able to complete the author page for Sniplits pretty soon. They have accepted my stories "Puppy" and "A Little Accident."

Publication Notes (September 2007)

Not much to say this month. I didn't submit anything (busy work schedule has seen to that), and received only a handful of rejections.

My poem "At the Back of the Backyard" has been accepted for the next issue of dotlit. Another international publication. Yea!

I have been asked to write a textbook review. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but the money isn't bad, and the book isn't terrible.

Hopefully things will slow down enough that I can send out some material soon.

Publication Notes (August 2007)

Looks like it has been a pretty good month, but I'm not telling about the rejections....

My poem "The Game On" has been published in Cadenza. This is my first British publication, so it is exciting. My copy arrived in the mail today. I was surprised to find a statue of a naked man on the cover. I'm not offended, but I know this is one publication I can't show to my Mom.

Just sent the contracts out on two stories that are being purchased by Sniplits, "Puppy" and "A Little Accident." The exciting news here -- other than finding a home for two stories and getting paid-- is that they record the stories to be purchased/downloaded, and after the first 500 I can earn some royalties on my work. This appears to be a new venture, but even if it doesn't work, I'm excited to be part of it. More here when I get information, so my legions of fans (hardy har har) can make me rich.

The Green Muse has published three of my poems online: "Sax Sonnet," "Episodes," and "Anna." You can read them here. A print version is avaiable.

My sequence "Peniel" has been accepted for 2008 publication by Farrago's Wainscot.

My sequence "Concurrences" should be available in October in Lachryma: Modern Songs of Lament. The issue can be ordered now.