Selling My First Short Story.

Since I already went into excruciating detail about how I came to write my first short story, I will now go into even greater detail (maybe not; depends on how much I feel like writing) about how I sold that story.

So, of course, I finished "Follow My Lead (formerly titled "Robbin' Banks With Robin Banks)" in April, but I didn't sell it until late July. That's because the idea of spreading my fiction around to the world (something I've never done before) intimidated the hell out of me. For people who edited and published magazines to read my stories and tell me whether or not they were good enough for publication? Astounding!

Of course, now I don't think it's so intimidating as it was. The number one rule of being a writer who submits a bunch of short stories; hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

Anyway, I found this neat little site called Duotrope, which not only gave me the names and websites of hundreds of markets looking for short stories, but also how much they paid, their word limit lengths, when they'd be closed periodically for submissions, etc. It also let me keep track and when and where I'd send a short story, and for a scatter-brained bastard like myself, this proved invaluable.

So I set up my account, looked around for a magazine, and I found one! And it paid TEN CENTS A WORD. It was called Clarkesworld. Yeah, that's right. First short story I ever tried selling was to Clarkesworld. Laugh it up, 'ya yuppies. I got a form rejection within two days. Big deal.

Then I found Beyond Imagination Digital Magazine, ran by Dayne Edmonson. A nice little startup magazine. So I sent my story in, my expectations set low. In truth I'd already found the next market I was going to send it to once Dayne inevitably rejected me. I forget the name of it now, though.

Because Dayne accepted the story. I was thrilled. I couldn't believe it. Someone else besides me and my mom liked my stories. Holy cow, was I floored. I must have bragged about that for weeks.

And they just kept going. I'm up to almost three dozen sold now, and that's a nice number. Still aiming for that big five-o announcement, so we'll see how long that takes.

Until next time.