writing

A Dream Come True…Times Three

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It all started with a simple dream: to complete my first novel. It took about three years – plus another two to type up the handwritten manuscript – but I did it. By the time I was finished transcribing, my heart was crowded with more dreams: write some short stories, get published digitally, get published in print, learn to write a screenplay, pen a piece of fanfiction (and have the guts to actually post it). One by one, all of these dreams came true…save #3.

I love getting published in e-zines for many reasons: your story is free for anyone to read, you can link to it on your website, and it’s just a great thing to have a sample of your work in such an easily accessible format – not to mention the awesomeness of instant reader feedback! But I must admit there’s something magical about being published in print. Just seeing your story in the pages of a book, being able to hold it in your hands and run your fingertips over the words…I wanted that. I think a lot of writers do.

And, for one reason or another, the dream just kept drifting out of reach. My very first acceptance was for a print newspaper in the city where I attended college. I was thrilled. Then it didn’t happen. No explanation, never heard from the editor again. I spent long months feeling baffled and hurt, then eventually moved on.

My next acceptance – or, as I like to call it, my first real acceptance – came from Every Day Fiction. One of the many things that drew me to them was that they were a digital market, but they also put out an annual print anthology of their best stories. Sadly, they stopped doing this shortly after I started submitting to them. As far as I know, they’ve never restarted. I think it was just too expensive. Completely understandable, but once again, I had to put the dream on hold.

Then, just last year, I got the acceptance I’d been waiting for: one of my stories had been selected for a print children’s collection. Cloud Nine, here I come…right? Wrong. In December, I received an email from the publisher that they were no longer doing multi-author children’s collections and there was no guarantee they would ever publish my story.

I started to think I might be cursed. I started to think this particular dream would have to stay just that: a dream. I started to think maybe it was time to let it go.

Thankfully, I didn’t listen to those little whispering cockroaches of doubt. I kept submitting to print markets, and finally, it paid off. A few months ago, as I shared right here on ATHF, I received notification that my story “The Greatest Gift” would be published in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What?

But the awesomeness didn’t stop there. A few weeks after that, I got another email from Chicken Soup for the Soul: my dog story, “Legacy,” had been selected to appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dog Did What?

A few weeks after that, the unimaginable happened: my werewolf story, “Burn,” was accepted to appear in the August 2014 issue of Trysts of Fate, a dark paranormal romance magazine presented by Alban Lake Publishing. A print magazine.

After all those times the dream had slipped away, it seemed just too good to be true. When the hyper excitement wore off, I began to worry that maybe it was too good to be true. Both of these publishers were very reputable, but still, I’d been burned in the past – multiple times. I couldn’t truly let myself believe – not until I could hold the books in my hands. Like, for real.

In mid-July, I got my wish: the first batch of contributor’s copies arrived, and I ran my fingers over the glossy cover of Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Dog Did What? for the very first time. I touched my name on the page, saw my words in print at long last. Less than a week later, I was holding a contributor’s copy of Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What?, caressing the pages, smelling the crispness of fresh ink on paper. Then, about a month after that, my third baby arrived. Trysts of Fate was just as glossy as the other two, the striking cover art looking even better in person than it had on the publisher’s website. There was even something special about just knowing that they were advance copies – something most people weren’t able to read or touch just yet.

Nowadays, of course, anyone can hold my babies. Anyone can read them. The Chicken Soup books officially came out on August 19th, and can be purchased in bookstores and online. The August 2014 issue of Trysts of Fate is available in Alban Lake Publishing’s online store.

The dream has finally, officially come true. And in the process, two other dreams got fulfilled, as well: 1.) I got a non-fiction story published for the first time, and 2.) I got published in a book with one of my absolute favorite authors: Beth Cato. (Her wonderful stories “Welcome to the Navy” and “All About the Balloon” also appear in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Cat Did What?)

So, now that I’ve had a month or so to bask in the glory, what’s next?

More dreams, of course! I have so many waiting in the wings: do a non-profit book signing, run a workshop with my writing group, finish my nano novel (yeah, still working on that…I think it’s become a trilogy at this point), have one of my stories illustrated, write a TV pilot, write a spec script for Castle, write a movie script, attend the Austin Film Festival, and of course the biggie – become a published novelist!

But that’s just me – what about you? What are your writing dreams, and how are you pursuing them? Maybe the only difference between a dream and a goal is doing something to make it happen…or simply not giving up the hope that it actually could.

Whatever your dream is, don’t give up on it. Even when Fate seems to be telling you, in a firm and convincing voice, that things are simply not going to work out for you. Sometimes there’s a nice surprise – or three – waiting just around the corner. 🙂

Keep writing!

-Gretchen

When Formatting Attacks…

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“Your cover letter is beautifully written, but it needs some different formatting – the punctuation marks come out as strange characters!”

This frightening message came to me in an email from a family friend. She had graciously allowed me to send her a copy of my cover letter, so she could give me feedback before I sent it on to a publisher. I thought she might make a few tweaks here and there – change a few sentences around, nothing major. I never expected her to tell me that my cover letter looked like alien symbols and gibberish!

Soon after this exchange, I came across an article detailing what happens to the formatting of a Microsoft Word document when you Copy and Paste it into the little “Compose” box of your email. To sum it up: bad things. VERY VERY Bad Things can happen when you C&P from Word into any web browser.

Luckily, I had sent this most recent cover letter to a friend first. But I’d already sent more than a dozen email cover letters in the past, without any idea that even though they looked perfectly normal on my screen, they looked dramatically different to the person receiving them.

And all this time, I thought I was doing a good thing by composing them in Word. I didn’t want to just dash off some sloppy cover letter right in my email. I wanted to pre-write the letter, perfect it, and print it off so others could read it and edit it for me, even if the letter was only five measly sentences.

(Side note: Just to be clear, sending an attachment in MS Word is totally fine. If you’re sending a story or even a cover letter as a .DOC or .DOCX attachment, it should look exactly as it’s supposed to, as long as that’s the format requested by the publisher. The problem only occurs when Copying and Pasting something from MS Word into the body of your email, be it a letter or even a whole story (yes, some publishers want your whole story in the body of the email).)

The solution:

There are several simple things you can do to make darn sure the content in the body of your email looks exactly as you intended. The easiest way is just to directly write your message in the “Compose” box of your email. This is the method I now use for very short cover letters and other succinct messages. For longer content, however, this would not be practical. (Who wants to re-type their whole 6,000-word zombie pirate adventure?) In the case of longer material, I would recommend Copying and Pasting from Word into Notepad, and then from Notepad into your email. (You will have to go through and redo all the italics, bolds, etc. in your email if you choose this method, because that formatting will be lost in Notepad.) The final safeguard: send the email to yourself or a friend before sending it to a publisher. You want to start off that writer-publisher relationship on the right foot – not the ugly alien foot with sixteen blue toes!

Last note: I wrote this post with full knowledge that most people are already completely aware of this issue. In fact, most people reading this post probably think I’m an idiot for not being aware of it. Nonetheless, for that one person who might not know, for that one poor soul who’s about to unwittingly send out an important query letter filled with wing-dings and squiggly lines, I decided to put this out there.

Hope it helps!

Keep writing and submitting!

-Gretchen

Where there’s smoke…

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Dear Readers and Guests:

You may have noticed that lately the updates to this site have been, well, nonexistent. Not to get all “dog ate my homework” on you, but I do have a pretty decent excuse for neglecting ATHF. Actually, it’s a really GOOD excuse: during the recent violent weather in the US, my home was struck by lightning and subsequently caught fire. The blaze was so bad, it took numerous fire crews almost three hours to douse the flames. No one – human or animal – was injured, but the damage to the structure was substantial. In the weeks since then, my whole family has been grasping for some sense of normalcy as we struggle to make arrangements for the near future and plans for the distant one. While I would never include my recent experiences on my top ten list of “favorite life moments,” in some ways the fire really was a gift, because it certainly showed me the very best that humanity has to offer:

As a woman I’d never met before ran over to take each cat from my arms as I carried them, one by one, out of the burning building, I marveled at the kindness of strangers. As a firefighter made trip after trip upstairs to rescue my birds, I couldn’t help but be amazed at the bravery of those who put their lives on the line every day. As my brother and his family sheltered and fed us, without question or hesitation, I knew that even though my home had just burned down and many of my possessions were lost, I was still the luckiest girl on the planet.

Right now, things are in upheaval. Very soon, that should change. And I just want folks to know that although the updates to this site might be sporadic for the next month or so, there WILL be updates. Whether I have home access to the Internet or not, I have no intention of abadoning this website. In fact, here’s a little sample of what I have planned for the next few entries:

Fan Stuff:

-Long overdue reviews of The Mentalist and Supernatural season finales (The Mentalist one is already 98% written!)
-Reviews of Iron Man 3 and The Man of Steel

Writer Stuff:
-Tips and resources for self-editing and taking critiques from others
-Rejection Letter Revisited (I’ll be posting one of my old rejection letters and discussing what I learned, and what YOU can learn from my mistakes!)

I want to thank everyone who has stopped by ATHF, both the one-time visitors and most especially the regular readers and followers. When I see that little “like” message, I know someone’s reading, and that makes it all worth it. 🙂 I appreciate your patience and support during this difficult time. The writer in me misses writing, reading, and submitting. The fan in me misses fan fiction and TELEVISION! (I don’t care if it’s reruns, I still need to see my shows!) Hopefully soon there will be time for all of these things. In the meantime, thanks for hanging in there.

Sincerely,
Gretchen

My Favorite Fiction E-zines

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As writers, we’re supposed to read every day. We’re supposed to study the work of other writers, and learn from it. We’re supposed to have extensive knowledge of our genres, so as not to repeat a story that’s been told five gazillion times. But in this insanely busy world, most of us are lucky if we manage to find a few hours a week to write, much less read. Clearly, we’re not going to make it to Barnes and Noble to pick up a new thriller every day – so how do we keep our critical reading skills fresh? For me, the answer is simple: e-zines. There are numerous quality, free-to-read e-zines on the web, which allow readers regular access to brand-new stories, all without leaving the comfort of a cushy computer chair.

The following are three of my favorite e-zines. None of them charge for subscriptions, and all of them publish new stories on a regular basis. Also, I should add that all three of these are paying markets, currently open for submissions. So, what are you waiting for? Go check them out:

Every Day Fiction ( http://www.everydayfiction.com/ )

This is a flash fiction zine that publishes a new story every single day. All genres are welcome, and each piece is only 1,000 words or less – short enough to read in the morning before your commute, or while you’re wolfing down Cheetos on your lunch break. This magazine has great variety in terms of the styles and subject matters it publishes. One day you’re reading about a little girl trying to save a weird, cat-like creature on an alien world, the next day you’re reading about a dude who’s in love with a painting. Fresh, edgy and experimental writing goes side-by-side with more traditional prose in this cool flash zine. Stories can be sent directly to your email, and are also available on the website. Older stories remain on the site, archived by category.

Daily Science Fiction ( http://dailysciencefiction.com/ )

This zine publishes new science fiction and fantasy stories Monday through Friday. Like EDF, the stories can be sent directly to your email, or you can read them on the site. DSF tends to publish flash stories on the first four days of the week, with a longer story on Fridays. Most of the stories they publish have this really beautiful, literary quality. One of the neat things about this e-zine is that you don’t really have to be a fan of the science fiction/fantasy genre to appreciate the stories, since so many of them are character-driven. Another nifty feature: like EDF, the stories on the site are archived by category, so if you just want to read about monsters, or robots, or any other specific topic, you can get there with a click of a button.

Knowonder! ( http://www.knowonder.com/ )

Here’s one for children’s fiction authors! This magazine has a (non-free) print version which publishes thirty new stories each month, but you can read ten of those thirty stories on their website for free! The emphasis is on read-aloud stories with prose that engages all of the senses and adventures that capture the imaginations of young children. The tales range from humorous to action-filled, and are all, of course, kid-friendly. Definitely a can’t-miss site for children’s writers and also for Moms who are a little bit tired of reading Goodnight, Moon every single night.

Now you’ve got three great magazines to read, each just a mouse-click away. So, go get your daily dose of fiction!

-Gretchen