Posts Tagged with werewolves

Writing goals for 2024

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Well, January may almost be over, but it’s not too late to post some writing goals for 2024. I hope!

I’ve been focusing on getting some novel manuscripts written, revised, and/or polished in recent years, and I let short fiction submissions fall by the wayside. Which is too bad, considering there are a number that I never found homes for.

So, in the interests of getting short stories out there, I decided to do a few things. One: write new stories. Two: revise old stories that were never published. Three: send out previously published stories to markets that take reprints. In other words: submit, submit, submit!

Werewolf figure from American Werewolf in London prowls over two short stories by David Jón Fuller
A werewolf figure from An American Werewolf in London prowls over two new short stories.

It was fun to log back in the Submission Grinder for the first time in ages, and start logging new submissions. Having written a couple of new stories at the tail end of 2023, and another at the beginning of 2024, I decided to aim high. My goal for 2024? Twelve new publication credits, either first publication or reprint. I’m not fussy! There are a lot of great magazines and anthologies out there, and I want my work in as many of them as I can manage.

I had kind of forgotten how much work it can be to find just the right market or submissions call for a particular story, and then making sure your submission package matches all the requirements. And then: the obsessive checking of email, Moksha, or Submission Grinder to see if there are any new responses. Spoiler alert: having a lot of stories out on sub does not mean an avalanche of writing correspondence.

However, I have a number of secondary markets lined up for each story I sent out, so the inevitable rejections aren’t so terrible — I can just send the story out to the next possible home. And new submission calls, special issues, and anthologies crop up all the time. I figured that to get to a dozen new publication credits this year, I would need to keep at least that many stories out on submission at all times. Right now I’ve got 14. I also have a few more unpublished stories I still like that could use an overhaul. So with a few more drafts apiece, I’ll get those ready to send out as well.

Of course, the goal is to get to zero submissions, meaning every story has found a home somewhere. Maybe I’ll get there! Then again, I plan to keep writing new stories. We’ll see where we are by December 31…

Guns and Romances now available

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Guns&Romances LRI announced landing a story in the Guns and Romances anthology some time ago, but now I’m thrilled to say the book is now available.

Edited by Nerine Dorman and Carrie Clevenger, the concept for the book was that each story had to feature “two characters interacting, flavoured with guns and music.” My story, “Caged,” has a same-sex romance, a werewolf, running commentary on the top five heavy metal drummers of all time, and at least two firearms being used in accordance with Anton Chekhov’s maxim. Oh, and a snowmobile chase.

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Back to the Front: researching “The Wolves of Vimy”

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Kneeling in the Silver Light visits the war memorial on Memorial Boulevard in Winnipeg.
Kneeling in the Silver Light visits the war monument on Memorial Boulevard in Winnipeg.

Shifting genres to tell an earlier part of a character’s story wasn’t something I initially planned on when writing “The Wolves of Vimy” (out now in Kneeling in the Silver Light). But when it came down to it, I thought, what the hell — there’s a story there and I might just learn something.

I’ve blogged earlier this year about how writing “A Deeper Echo” for Long Hidden changed my approach to writing speculative fiction (and, indeed, the way I look at history). For Kneeling in the Silver Light, a dark fantasy/horror anthology of stories about the First World War, I wanted to tell a story in a genre I’d never written in before: military fiction.

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Werewolves, writing, and the first half of 2014

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Wait, what? It’s July already? Not sure how the first half of 2014 burned up like that.  Oh wait, yes I am: I’ve been writing, editing and submitting like a fool. Well, a circumspect fool.

The year has been full of werewolves so far.

Writing

I meant to announce this earlier, but a brand-new werewolf story of mine, “Caged,” was accepted into Guns and Romances, a new anthology from Dark Continents Publishing. I’ve wanted to send them something for a while, so when the submission call went out, I thought hard about how I could come up with a story that would fit DC’srequirements for the antho. If possible, I wanted it to fit into the cycle of stories I’ve been working on for the last year and a half, and meet most of the criteria for Long Hidden, which is something I’ve been trying to do with new stories since submitting to that anthology last year.

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Marginalization, speculative fiction and writing for Long Hidden, part 2: the how

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In a previous post, I talked about why I wrote and submitted a short story to Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History. Given the differences between my personal background and that of the main character in the story, I had to do a lot of research just to write the first draft.  This post is about that.

English: Crowd gathered outside old City Hall,...
Crowd gathered outside old City Hall, at Main Street and William Avenue, during the Winnipeg General Strike. Visible on the left are the Union Bank of Canada building and Leland Hotel. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The main character, Thomas Greyeyes, lives in a different era from me (the story is set in 1919), is a First World War veteran, is an Anishinaabe man who worked as a trapper in northern Manitoba, and has barely seen his children in years. I’m of English and Icelandic descent and grew up in the late 20th century. About the only things I had in common with my main character are where the story is set (Winnipeg, where I have lived most my life) and age — Thomas and I are both around 40 years old. And, like him, I’m a father.

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Marginalization, speculative fiction, and writing for Long Hidden, part I: the why

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Writing and submitting a story for Long Hidden has changed the way I approach speculative fiction. Probably not enough, but it’s a start.

If you’re not familiar with Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, click on over and see what it’s all about. One of the purposes of the anthology edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older, published by Crossed Genres, is to put marginalized people at the centre of the story, with the added context of real-world history blended with speculative elements.

A big part of the reason I wanted to submit a piece to Long Hidden was I wasn’t sure I could do it.

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