Thrilled to say that I have sold my second short story of 2023. The story is called “ePik Flayl Creates the Wor(l)d…Again.” It will appear in an anthology called Dreaming the God, published by Dark Dragon Press.
This is especially delightful for two reasons. The first is that it is my second story published by Dark Dragon; the first appeared in Dreaming the Goddess two years ago. The second is that I thought this story was utterly unsellable.
Consider the elevator pitch for the story: A history of human communications told as a series of trickster tales. It’s not exactly a narrative story, and it may come across as a bit of an intellectual exercise. I couldn’t imagine a publisher going for it.
But…
At the launch for Dreaming the Goddess, editor Karen Dales mentioned that, if sales were good enough, she would consider publishing a companion volume called Dreaming the God. She couldn’t know that, as soon as I heard that, I thought, Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! Do it! And she she did it.
This experience suggests to me that there is a market for any story. Sometimes, you just have to wait until it opens up to find it.