Even more chickens

In case you haven't succumbed to the temptation to buy the Cracked anthology yet, here's another excerpt from my story Stray Thoughts below. You know, because everyone deserves to add funny chicken stories to their life. Twenty cooped-up authors are here to distract you from the outside world for a romp through chicken-infested goodness.

Poke the chickens to find special content and a giveaway.

This is from a little farther into Stray Thoughts than my first excerpt a few days ago, but it can still give you a feel for the flavor of my story. It's not much like the other stories in the collection, so plan for a lot of variety in how your chicken is served.

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    “You all stay in the henhouse. I’d hate to see anyone take you and run off.” Delores latched the henhouse door, then ambled over to the top of the stairwell to sit in her comfy padded chair, the one with the pretty floral pattern. The chair sat behind the steel armor plating she’d assembled as a barricade across the top of the staircase. It wouldn’t do to stand up every time she had to guard her home from intruders. She waited and listened, ready to shoot if it was those blasted thugs again.

    “Hello?” It sounded more like a young girl than a thug. “Is anyone there?” Maybe a teenager.

    “Go away.”

    “I…I heard you had food up here.”

    “Unless you have a power inverter to trade, I’ve got nothing for you. Go back where you came from.” Delores couldn’t go around taking in strays. The garden had allowed her to build up a little store of dried vegetables for a rainy day, but the rooftop garden and the chickens were hers. If she started sharing, a dozen beggars would appear before long, and she couldn’t support so many. 

    The girl’s voice echoed back up the stairwell. “I can’t stay where I came from. The canned food ran out. I don’t dare go to the settlement after I saw them out hunting. I saw how they treat people there.”

    “Did they see you? Did they follow you?” Delores knew better than to care what happened to the girl, but she didn’t want trouble with the thugs from the settlement if she could avoid it.

    “No, I don’t think so.”

    “Good. Then go away, like I said.”

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You can find Cracked on Amazon and review it there and on Goodreads.

Goodreads * Amazon

Chickens galore

 I have a new story out this month, so I joined up as part of the blog tour to get the word out. Follow the blog tour here for a special contest and giveaway! This collection of stories came about because the editor, Bokerah Brumley, mentioned how funny it would be to put such a collection together as a cure for boredom induced by pandemic isolation. People responded. Within minutes, the project transformed from "wouldn't it be funny" to "here's where you send submissions."

Due to the magic of high-speed editing, I submitted a story to her within a few hours of her call for submissions. That's a record for me, but it only worked because I had a story that nearly qualified, and needed just a few tweaks. Instead of more cowbell, it needed more chickens.

Stories by:

J. F. Posthumus, Cedar Sanderson, J Trevor Robinson, Richard Paolinelli, Jane Lebak, J. D. Beckwith, Grace Bridges, Denton Salle, Margo Bond Collins, J. A Campanile, Amber Draeger, Karina Fabian, Abigail Falanga, Clair W. Kiernan, L. Jagi Lamplighter, David Millican, John M. Olsen, Dawn Witzke,Joshua M. Young, Bokerah Brumley

Here's an excerpt from my story Stray Thoughts to show a bit of the flavor of my story. Don't expect the whole collection to be like this, since mine may be the only post-apocalyptic story in the book. Interesting tidbit: I wrote the story before COVID-19 hit, so the plague of my story was NOT inspired by the real thing.

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    Delores fetched today’s eggs and brought them to her outdoor kitchen.

    She turned on her hotplate and waited for it to warm up, filling the time with conversation. “You remember last year? Things were different. I had that run-down basement apartment. I was arguing with the landlord over rent when the news came on about a new strain of flu spreading real fast-like. A few hours later, the city went dark. Landlord Bob didn’t last much longer, God rest his miserable soul. Turns out it wasn’t the flu, but nobody lasted long enough to name it.” She shook her head at the memories.

    The birds always enjoyed her stories, even when she told the same ones every day. She waved a hand over the hotplate and frowned, then prodded it with a bare finger. The coiled element was cold. She wiggled the plug and the wiring, and still got no power. Shrugging, she toddled over to the power inverter that ran her tiny kitchen. The lights on it were dead.

---

I love the book;s attention to detail on formatting. This chicken comes from the print version.

Buy it now! Goodreads * Amazon

Collective Darkness Anthology

 Elizabeth Suggs, the editor for a horror anthology Collective Darkness, interviewed me a couple of days ago. I wrote the forword for the collection she edited.

While I don't consider myself a horror writer, I'm in two horror anthologies put out by the Utah chapter of the Horror Writers of America. This forword was a great chance for me to introduce a work that consists of a nice mix of already-published authors and some new voices, so it's a good chance to find a new favorite author.

Click on the book to take a look at it.

League of Utah Writers, Quills Conference 2020

The League of Utah Writers Quills 2020 conference is over. It was memorable for seveal reasons.

1. I'm the new President of the League. Johnny Worthen has moved to become the Past-President and Bryan Young has become the President-Elect.

2. I got to participate in a commemorative 85th year anthology The Function of Freedom as a contributor, an editor, and in writing some closing remarks. It contains work from a wide range of League members in several genres, including poetry and essay along with speculative fiction. My story Give and Take tells of a man working to make up for a past he regrets as he slaves in the mines to extract bits of magic from the ground.

3. The conference was entirely online with some pre-recorded classes, live Q&A, live workshops, live one-on-one pitches with agents and editors, our annual writing contest awards, and even a social room for chat and networking with fellow-attendees. Live would be better in most cases, but we were able to pull people in who would otherwise never be able to come.

It was a great event and I look forward to working with a great team.

Yes, I'm still here

It's kind of funny that in February I mentioned that conference season was set to begin. COVID-19 had other plans, and I haven't been to a live conference since. I may not have a chance to mingle with fans and authors in person for the rest of the year, but health and safety are important. I'd hate to see COVID turn into a mega-con-crud infection.

For the League of Utah Writers, we moved both the spring conference and the upcoming Quills Conference in August to online formats. The Spring conference went well, and we've got some great guests lined up. This August I'll migrate from President-Elect of the League to become President, most likely for a year.

In other news, I'm actively working on a whole raft of projects.

• I'm working with an editor on my biplanes-and-gargoyles novel, due to be published later this year.
• I sent in edits for a Christmas ghost story about a week ago.
• I've got a story in a re-released Earth Planetary Anthology coming out next week.
• I just approved a proof copy of an anthology for the League of Utah Writers where I have a short story on the function of freedom, and need to send in an author bio today.
• Add to that the short-ish sci-fi novel (under 60k words) I'm doing first-pass edits on, and my cup runneth over.
• I've started to assemble a short story collection, pulling in several reprints and some never-published stories to round out the mix. Just today I realized I've got a short story due to be published in August that I'd failed to put into my spreadsheets, and it fits into the collection.

Later today I'll go outside with my family and cook burgers, then set off fireworks for Independence Day.

COVID has changed how I do things, but I've still got a task list longer than I can finish. :)

Life the Universe and Everything

It's that time of year again. Conference season has begun. I'm starting off my tour with LTUE this weekend. If you are somewhere near Provo, Utah, stop by to say hello. If you're not going to register for the (rather inexpensive) conference, there is a free-to-the-public book signing Friday night.

This conference is a great time to meet with friends and to do some networking. I hope to also do a little recruiting for the League of Utah Writers since we have our Quills conference coming up in August. (Spring Conference schedule is already mostly set.)

A cool bonus: I got copies of Crystal Empire in time to bring them, so it will be in the vendor room along with the rest of the series, and with a few anthologies I'm in.

Here is my LTUE schedule:

How to Judge a Book

Friday 10:00 AM

David Farland

M. Todd Gallowglas
John M. Olsen (Moderating)
Tony Daniel

We all know never to judge a book by its cover, but how do we judge it? Every bookworm has their own neverending reading list. How do we decide which books to read and which books to skip?

Book Signing Event

(Free to the public)
Friday 6:30 - 8:00 PM

This is the author signing to beat all author signings. Introduce yourself to your favorite authors and get your books signed. Bring your own books, and/or purchase select titles onsite. This is one event not to be missed!

Feedback, Critiques, and Criticism

Friday 6:00 PM

C.H. Hung
Kenneth Hunter Gordon
John M. Olsen
Jessica Guernsey
Quiana Chase
Michael F. Haspil

How to critique the works of others without hurting their feelings. Can you still be friends after that dreaded critique session?

Out with the old, in with the new

Another year in the books. (books! Get it?) Let's see what the master story submission spreadsheet shows.

In 2019 I had seven short story acceptances and one novel on twenty-one submissions, which is one less win on the same number of submissions from 2018. My acceptance rate is still pretty good at about 33%, so I'm pretty happy with how things went.

I also had a novel, Crystal Empire, come out this year. That makes about one novel a year. I'll keep that going with the novel I just turned into the publisher for review last December. It was provisionally accepted, so we'll see in a month or two what the publisher thinks.

My overall short story total sold is now twenty-seven. That is starting to sound normal to me, where the number would have been pie-in-the-sky fantasy when I got started.

What's next?

This coming year I'd like to put out a collection of my Science Fiction stories, and another of Fantasy stories. I have enough of each to top 40,000 words for each collection if I don't mix in the sub-genres of Steampunk and Urban Fantasy. If I added those, I'd be over 70,000 per collection.

I also plan to keep submitting short stories, but I may ramp back a little to make more time for the next series. I'll spend more time shopping my stories to the higher paying markets to see if I can disqualify myself from Writers of the Future by either winning, or by selling too much pro-grade work.

Speaking of a new series of novels, I'm going to start outlining this thing soon. Now that I know I have what it takes to finish a series, it's time to apply all my recent lessons and new skills to a whole new project. I think I'll hit science fiction this time around. Working with small press and self-pub, I have a bit more flexibility to write what I want, and I like that.

Another big change for this year is that in August I will migrate from President-Elect to President of the League of Utah Writers. That will certainly slurp up some of my time, as being President-Elect has for the past year-and-a-half. I enjoy giving back to the writing community that has taught me so much over the past few years.

2019 short story sales:

A Little Help from my Friends (an essay in How I Got Published and What I Learned Along the Way)
Stalemate (Secret Lunar Wars anthology should be out in 2020)
Maintenance Mode (Mecha anthology)
Retirement Plan (Storyhack Issue 4)
Providence Canyon (Heard at a Utah Diner anthology)
The Bannik and the Soap (Fae and Fate anthology)
Designated Survivors (A cancelled anthology. Going to sell it again soon, I hope.)