Although I have not been blogging much lately, I have had a recent run of success in short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. I recently published a short non-fiction article on a little-known blues artist from the 1930s named Robert Johnson in Mike Korn's Wormwood Chronicles. The article idea stemmed from a Facebook post I made to Mike's group, Dr. M's House of Weird, where I posted about this blues artist who was said to have made a deal with the devil to become a better guitar player. I found it so fascinating, it inspired me to research a little more about Johnson until I wrote my own article titled "Robert Johnson: The World's First (Satanic) Rock Star," which can be found here.
Then I found success for my poetry in, not one but two, publications. "Introverts Unite" will appear in the next issue of Teach. Write. My work has been published in Teach. Write. a few times before, and I believe it is very good literary magazine. Then I received another acceptance from the literary magazine associated with Norfolk State University's English department where I teach college English courses. The poem, "Environmental Generations," will appear in the issue published later this semester. I am particularly excited about this one because it will be the first time I am published in a literary magazine directly associated with a university.
Between those acceptances, I received an acceptance from a podcast, a market I had been trying to break into for some time now, called Creepy Podcast. My short story, "A Witch's Revenge," will appear as part of their 31 Days of Horror series in October. I am very excited to hear how this story will turn out after it is read by one of their talented actors.
It is an interesting story, how I managed to gain that short story acceptance. It actually starts with two rejections. I had previously sent another story to Creepy Podcast, but it received a personalized rejection that said the story I sent them had too much dialogue with too many speakers, and they prefer stories with one very few speakers and no back and forth dialogue. Meanwhile, I sent "A Witch's Revenge" to another publication, and it received a personalized rejection because that publication's editor said they did not like the fact that the story had only one character and no dialogue. So I got the idea that if one editor said they did not like the fact that this story had a single character and no dialogue, and the other publication rejected a previous story because they want stories with little to no dialogue, why not send the rejected story with no dialogue to the publication that wants such a story. And that's how I landed that acceptance with Creepy Podcast.
Meanwhile, I have also started making the rounds at several horror and science fiction conventions. I attended Fanta-Sci at the Chesapeake Central Library with the author of numerous books about Virginia folklore, as well as numerous short stories and poetry, Pam Kinney (pictured below), working the Horror Writers Association - Virginia Chapter table and sold copies of several anthologies I appear in as well as a self-published short story. Then I recently attended Tidewater Horror Con in Virginia Beach, and plan on attending Mars Con in Virginia Beach in January. Additionally, I started appearing as a regular guest on a YouTube channel discussing cult movies called MovieNaut. I will likely be blogging about all of these other ventures in the near future, but until then, see you at the cons.
