Story sales come from keeping things in the mail, and from following up, and hopefully also from anthology invites. I haven’t been doing very well at keeping things in the mail the last year or so, and then a fit of good behavior came over me and I mailed out everything. The universe rewards good behavior.
I placed a story I really love with a new market for me, Khimairal Ink, which looks like a lovely online magazine that supports feminist writing. So that was nice, even though it’s not a major market. The story was the seed story for MAYAN DECEMBER, the completed book I’m marketing now (the setting stayed, the characters and the situation changed, so I think of it as a story set in the same world).
I also sold another “High Hills” story to Kerrie Hughes for an upcoming anthology. I was thrilled that she asked for a story in that setting, which is her third purchase there (a magical place between the Sawdust Festival in Laguna Beach and a milder, more magical world that lives behind it).
I turned in a story to another anthology – details if it gets accepted. I’m sweating that one – the writers in the TOC for last year’s version are really good (and so are the stories I’ve read so far), and have more style in their writing than I think I do.
And last, out of the blue, I heard that “My Grandfather’s River” will be included in Futures From Nature, an anthology of stories from Henry Gee’s delightful Futures series (one-pagers that close each issue of the prestigous Nature magazine).
So July was a pretty good month for stories – I wrote two, sold two, and heard a third would be published. No progress on novels – but that’s next.