Books - Check 'Em Out!

I’ve written a few more short stories. They’re making rounds on the “let’s try to get published” circuit as we speak. Normally, I would’ve just posted them on my site, but lately I’ve been thinking that it would probably help me if I get at least a couple publishing credits under my belt.

Naturally, short stories seem like a good way to do this. The conventional wisdom has always been that if you want someone to publish your novel, you’ll need to show them that you’re publishable, or in other words: That you’ve already been published. Sort of reminds me of the old saying, “In order to get a loan, you must first prove that you don’t need one.” I suppose it does make sense though, that a writer would be taken more seriously for a large project if they have a few smaller ones already under their belt.

Unfortunately, the market for short stories just isn’t what it used to be. At the time many of our modern powerhouse writers were cutting their teeth on short stories, there were a lot more printed publications specializing in just that; printing short stories. Thankfully, we do have the internet, and many sites still look for original short fiction. There are a few printed magazines out there too, but competition is fierce. Competition is fine, I’m not afraid of a few more rejections. For me, the problem is that I just want to share my work, so I’m itching to post it on my site.

I know, I know… What’s stopping me? Back to the whole “publishing credit” thing, I really would like a couple of those, so I’m going to try it out for a while. Hell, what’s the harm, right? Among many new writers there is a school of thought that trying to get a short story published anymore may be more trouble than it’s worth. I’m not sure what the right answer is, but I think that at least seeing something I’ve written published would be pretty sweet, so like I said, I’ll give it a whirl.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of reading, which has been great. During the semesters I go to school and work full time, so I don’t get much chance to read for enjoyment, which is a shame. Now that I’m on a break for a few weeks before the fall semester starts – well, working full time but no school, so close enough to a break – I’ve been sucking down the novels. My fiancé commented the other night on how quickly I read. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I suppose I do.

It made me think about being a kid. I was in the forth grade, I want to say. Could have been the third, but that’s not totally important. Our class participated in the Book It program, so there on the wall was a huge construction paper poster with every kid’s name on it, and a big paper star for every book report that they turned in. It was getting close to the end of the year and I remember having a conversation with a kid I sat next to. I told him that I didn’t see why anyone would voluntarily write a book report and turn it – for fun. The kid let me know that it wasn’t all for fun, in fact, if you did twenty book reports, you got a free pizza from Pizza Hut.

What. The. Fuck. Why didn’t anyone tell me this before? We’re talking about pizza here, people! That night, I was on a mission. I pulled out every supermarket paperback I had bought with my meager allowance, every book of my mom’s that I had read, and struggled to jog my memory about every library book I had read over the course of the year. Some, I couldn’t remember the author, others I couldn’t remember the title, and still others just weren’t good enough to remember at all. So, I couldn’t get credit for all of my reading.

The next morning, I turned in over forty book reports.

Needless to say, teacher was a little suspicious. So, that afternoon I stood in front of her desk, rubbing my hand, cramped from a night of feverishly summarizing every novel on paper. The teacher – I can’t remember her name for the life of me, sad – stood behind her desk with a coworker. They each held a pile of the reports I had turned in. At random, they began to quiz me on the book reports; asking me details about the stories, characters, the number of pages and where I got the book from.

The first one, I did have a little trouble remembering. It was a young adult book about some kid growing up, blah, blah. The teacher got a little knowing smile and looked at her coworker. She picked another report and asked me about it.

“Tell me about Windows on a Lost World.”

Now that was my shit; she was talking about Star Trek. I think I was five minutes into recapping the story of how ancient alien technology had turned many of the ship’s away team into giant crabs when she stopped me. Then her coworker asked me about a Robotech book. Midway into my explanation about who the Zentradi were and why they were hell bent on the destruction of mankind, I was once again, stopped. I was actually kind of pissed that I didn’t get to finish, it was a great story and I wanted to tell them about it.

We went on like that for a few more minutes. In the end, she completely believed me, and I made it rain pizza, y’all. On a couple of glorious nights, I actually contributed to my family – providing a meal.

In hindsight, I think the teacher was right to be suspicious. After all, some kids may cheat and lie to get things they want. But in the end, she had to believe me. Many kids may tell a fib for a free pizza, but there are very few who will gladly drag themselves through the mud of self-proclaimed nerddom to do it.

Just thought I’d share that with you. Keep reading, your pizza awaits.

-A. Michael

The Launch of the Website!

At long last, I’ve finally published my website. I selected three short stories to go up, I’ll probably rotate them out periodically and I’ll definitely post new stories as I write them.

As many of you know, I’m a student and I also work. So when I do get breaks from the semester like this I try and bust a move on writing or writing-related projects that I’ve tabled while trying to keep up with life’s other demands. While I certainly do write during the semesters, I don’t usually have time for the bigger projects, like the website. Those tend to be the bigger goals on my “to do” list that have to wait for times such as this to come to fruition.

For this break – the next week and a half until the summer term starts – I told myself that I would finish the latest revision on The Red, publish my website, continue my quest to find an agent, and write at least two more short stories that I've been really itching to get to.

How’s the agent search going? Well, about as well as one could expect. I started sending query letters around the end of January, I only sent five out – which is a very small amount – and all five resulted in “thanks, but no thanks” responses. I would say that it’s disappointing, but it’s really not unexpected. I can’t remember where I read it, but I recall an author stating something to the effect of, “If you’re not getting rejected, then you’re not trying to get published.” Fact is, there are a lot of authors and a lot of agents who represent a wide-array of clients. I’ll find the right match. I just need to keep at it and more importantly, keep honing my skills as a writer.

So check out the site and let me know what you think! Drop a line or leave a comment.