Last year's Monster Fest

Let's take a look at a few photos from last year's Monster Fest, which took place on October 1, 2022, in Chesapeake, Virginia at the Chesapeake Central Library.

I worked the table for the Horror Writers Association where I signed up a few prospective members for the organization. The table was positioned between other HWA members, authors Red Lagoe and Pam Kinney. Author Brad Center also worked the table during the day.

I watched the costume contest, which is always fun. These are this past year's winners. I always consider the costume contest to be the main event of Monster Fest each year.

 Here is me displaying the line-up of events for the day. The HWA Virginia Chapter ran a panel / presentation on the importance of joining writing organizations. Overall, it was another fun event put on by Rob and Phyllis Floyd.

2022 By the Numbers

Every year I do this post to publicly state how much I am submitting and how many of those submissions result in successfully publishing one of my works.  Perhaps it will help any readers to gage themselves against what I have done each year. Perhaps many writers submit far more works than I do. Perhaps many submit far fewer. The idea of doing this began when I read a writer's blog (sorry, I cannot remember who) and they said they submit around 100 works per year. I decided I would see how many works I could submit each year. I found that I could submit between 35 and 50 works per year. I now try to work toward that 50 mark as much as possible. I have also found that the more works I submit each year the more of those works end up getting published, on average anyway.

So anyway, here are this year's numbers. I submitted a total of 8 books, although it was actually the same book submitted 8 times, which brings up another point. This is the total number of submissions, which means if the same book is submitted many times (8 in this case) it still counts as 8 submissions. The same holds true of short stories, poems, etc. I am working very hard to finish the follow-up to that first book, and I think I am getting close to deciding to self-publish that first book if I receive a few more rejections. Which brings up yet another point, some of these works I am still waiting to hear back on, including a few submissions of this novel.

I also had 29 short story submissions. Unfortunately, only one of those were successful this year, but again, a few of those submissions are still waiting on replies. That makes this year an anomaly in that I submitted more items than most other years, 48 total submissions, my second highest number of all time, but I had only one sale (again, so far). That success was "Beheaded" which appears in Madame Gray's Poe-Pourri, pictured above, and available on Amazon here. I also blogged about that particular sale here.

I had 11 poetry submissions, without any sales, and no non-fiction submissions this year. Just for comparison, 29 short story submissions is tied for my second highest, and 11 poetry submissions is tied for fourth highest. Eight novel submissions comes in second highest.

The most submissions I ever made in a year was 2018 where I hit 53, and it got me the most published works in a year as well with five total. This year saw my second most total at 48 as noted earlier. Third was in 2019 when I reached 47 total submissions, followed by 2021 with 44 total submissions, fourth was 2010 with 42 total, and 2020 with 35 total.

My goal for the coming year may be a little lower as I would like to start working on my longer works once again, namely my follow-up novel, and that Frankenstein project and hopefully get them both sent out to potential publishers or even agents.

I keep track of these on an Excel spreadsheet, and only recently started keeping track of total submissions each year. I find it helps me compete with myself to keep getting my works out there. If you see fit, feel free to tell me how many submissions you made last year, and how that looks compared to your other years. If it makes you feel better, I've had a lot of years with only a handful of submissions and even a few years with goose eggs.🥚😊

 

My Latest Short Story Sale

I am particularly excited about my latest short story sale for several reasons. For one thing, it is always exciting to make a short story sale, obviously, but this sale is particularly exciting. My latest short story sale is "Beheaded" (I love that title, by the way, but again, that's not why I am particularly excited about this sale). It will appear in the anthology Madame Gray's Poe-Pourri (cover pictured above) with the publisher, HellBound Books.

I have submitted to other anthologies with HellBound Book, but this was the first one they have actually accepted so far. All these are great reasons to be proud of this short story sale, and they are all reasons that I am proud of this short story sale. But there is one reason that makes me particularly proud of this specific short story sale.

The thing that makes me particularly proud of this short story sale is the fact that I consider this story, "Beheaded," to be part of the same universe as my first completed novel-length manuscript, The Sorcerer and my current work in progress, Blood of the Werewolf. That proves to me, and hopefully one day to a publisher, that stories in this universe can and will sell.

That universe is Romantic England (note the capital R in Romantic). It is similar enough to Victorian England that fans will be able to identify with both eras. It is the era just before the Victorian Era, usually noted as 1800 to 1835 in England. It is also my favorite literary era, with its love of nature and "spontaneous overflow of emotions." And it is the literary era I studied in college.

For more information on these works, you can see my previous blog-post on Shameless Self-Promotion. And for more information on this anthology, here is the link to HellBound Books. 

Shameless Self-Promotion

 

I was sending out my old manuscript for The Sorcerer to another small press recently, and their submission guidelines said their authors should be prepared to promote their work nearly every day. Most small presses, and even many large presses, want their authors to do quite a bit of their own promotion. Perhaps it has always been this way, but I think most people in the writing and publishing industry would say authors are expected to do more of their own promotion that at any time in the past. And most of that promotion at this stage should be about my current projects.

Then just today, I was in my Horror Writers Association-Virginia chapter meeting when we got to the end of the meeting, the point where we all discuss our current projects, and I spouted off a few items I have out for consideration. When they moved on to another member, it occurred to me that I had an intriguing story about my current manuscript project, Blood of the Werewolf but forgot to mention it.

With that in mind, here is that (hopefully) intriguing story:

I am currently in the editing process of Blood of the Werewolf, when I reached a scene that needed a total revision. Why? Because one of the characters was supposed to leave town by train, but the story takes place in 1815 England. When I researched the history of train travel, I discovered this was about 15 years too early for regular train travel. While many of my horror writing cohorts are researching far more interesting things like types of poisons and how much bloodloss a human can endure, I spent my writing session researching the history of train travel and the history of slippers. Anyway, it is a pivotal scene that cannot be totally deleted, so I must revise it in a way that the character uses a different mode of transportation. The most obvious mode of transportation would be ship.

This opened up an interesting possibility for the story. I want both The Sorcerer and Blood of the Werewolf to take place within the same universe, and it would be even better if they had another direct connection. But up until now they did not have any connections other than parts of both stories take place in England in the 1810s. The Sorcerer actually concerns a man who owns a shipping company. So this character in Blood of the Werewolf will now travel via the Nichols Shipping Company because it is the name of the shipping company the character in The Sorcerer owns, giving the two novels the type of direct connection I was hoping to create for them.

Oh yes, the photo above is me promoting a public presentation at Monster Fest.

Conversations With Cal Panel

I appeared in a panel interview recently talking about a short story in a self published anthology (but not self-published by me). It contains stories from several writers besides myself. Check it out as we get into a variety of subjects such as writing, vampires, horror in general, even music.

Tales of Wonder and Dread Interview

 I did an interview about a short story I wrote for a self published anthology of vampire stories (although not self-published by me). In it I go over how the two most famous monsters of all time, the Frankenstein monster and Dracula, were actually born on the same dark and stormy night. Good stuff. Check it out.

Fiction Friday

 

The biggest question from people who want to write but often don't is how to find the time, and while I have posted about finding time before, this will be another post about how to carve out that time. In fact, that previous blog post about how to find time to write was my most popular blog post to date with almost twice as many hits as the next most popular post.

But that's not why I'm posting about how to find the time again. I posting about it because it is important to schedule yourself a time to write, and it should be as frequent as possible. Some writers say it is important, some might even say crucial, to write every day. There are times of the year when I am able to write every day, but that's just not possible all year round for me. And I sometimes get frustrated with myself if I cannot write every day when I set out with that sort of an aggressive schedule. This makes me feel like it is likely other writers who set out with that sort of aggressive writing schedule might also get frustrated with themselves if they don't end up following their own schedule and write every day.

Don't get me wrong, if you are able to write every day, more power to you. I wish I could write every day, and as stated earlier, there are times when I can and do. But there are other times when that is just not possible because life catches up to me in one way or another.

It kind of reminds me of the scene in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's (an adaptation of a Truman Capote novel of the same name, which I own and still have not read [I need to get on that]). Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) asks Paul Varjak (George Peppard), a writer, if he writes every day and he claims that he does. Then Hepburn asks why there is no ribbon in his typewriter. Hepburn's character later gifts Peppard's character a typewriter ribbon so he can in fact write every day.

The important thing is to make sure you schedule out some sort of time and make sure you write at least that much. For me, I carve out, at minimum, a few hours on Friday nights to write. I often write more than just that once a week, and I certainly try to, but I tell all family and friends that this block of time on Friday nights is my "Fiction Fridays" (not coincidentally the title of this blogpost).

So get out there and carve out your time to write, or join me in writing on my Fiction Fridays, or go watch the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, or go read the book (like I need to do). Or go do something, because it is Friday, and I'm still writing this blog instead of writing my fiction. 😁