So, last year two great things happened:

- My story The Man in the Brown Coat was published at the wonderful podcast The Way of the Buffalo. This is an audio magazine, and it’s free – but the accept donations so they can pay their authors, so I think it’s pretty darned cool.

- My story Beyond the Border got an honorable mention in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest, which is pretty cool.

How I managed to get anything at all published and looked at was I wrote a bunch during a semi-concentrated period of time, but more importantly I edited and submitted my work as much as possible during that same period of time.  The story which got published was the 14th submitted in a three-month time span.  Out of that 14 submissions, I submitted The Man in the Brown Coat twice.  After the first rejection, I took a look at the story, at the title (it was originally called View from a Room) and reworked it.  So now I’m trying to a) sit on a story after I write it for at least a week so I can get an objective viewpoint and make it better, b) submit, submit, submit, and c) listen to other writer’s advice on how to make stories better.  It’s always hard to edit, but I’m working on it.

Anyway, you can now listen to The Man in the Brown Coat read by the gorgeous voice actress Laura Diemer. I will attempt to finish up the short story challenges given to me in 2011 within this year – and hopefully give you some other new fiction, as well as new published works.

Cheers and Happy 2012!

Anyway, I finally got to the stories requested by several of my friends!  Yay!  I have actually been working on other stories and have been diligently submitting them to various short story publications in my off time.  So far I’ve been rejected, but I remain hopeful!  I have about fourteen stories out at the moment.

But, you don’t read these posts to listen to me jabber on about myself! 

Here’s the first of 2011′s story requests:

“A mystery involving a late-night Zoo security guard.” – T.G.

This story involves some swearing, animal shenanigans and strange zoo guards.  I hope you enjoy Why is that Sheep Wearing Clothes?

It’s the last day of my journey – I’m going to land in Portland today and there I shall stay… until July when I drive down to LA.

Anyway, I saw my horoscope and it seemed particularly relevant in that vague way horoscopes do. It is (ahem):

“You are coming to the end of an intensely emotional period and it’s a smart idea to tie up as many loose ends as you can. Soon you will start a new project, but you aren’t out of the woods on the previous one yet. The Moon’s entry into your sign tonight can remind you of the instability of your changing needs. Even if you are uncomfortable with basing a long-term decision on your fluctuating feelings, they are still more trustworthy now than your logical analysis.”

Seems appropriate, this being the last day of my trip and all. I don’t really want it to end, so perhaps more travel is in my future.

I have one answer for you, dear readers, and that is 42.

Just kidding… it’s no, I haven’t been eaten by zombies or destroyed by my own creation.  I know, I can hear the sighs of relief from here.

So, what have I been doing, you might ask.  Well, I’ve been preparing for a road trip/move.  I’m relocating from Los Angeles, CA to Portland, OR.  I’m hoping I’ll like the change, but I’m not sure yet.  Compared to LA, Portland is frickin’ freezin’ Mr. Bigglesworth. Seriously.

Anyway, I’ve decided to do this trek in a leisurely fashion.  First of all, I have a ton of crap in my car, not in a Uhaul.  I’m not bringing any furniture up as of yet and I’m not bring *sob* all my books.  Just the ones I haven’t read yet or am incomplete on (I’m talking to you, writers of “No Quarter”).

So far my journey has taken me through the lovely, spring-touched hills and stinky beef farms between Los Angeles and San Francisco, with a quick stop at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose.  Then, after a delicious meal with fabulous wine in North Beach and a horrendous night of my dog barking at the dog in the other hotel room, I hit up Russian Hill and the Marina before crossing the Golden Gate to drive out through Napa and Sonoma.

Now, if you’ve seen some vineyards, you think you’ve seen ‘em all. Not so in Napa.  Oh My God. I’ve never seen so many grapevines.  There are literally rolling mountains FULL of them.  It’s actually a bit mind boggling.

Anyway, then I started driving through the Redwoods.  If that was you riding my ass, sorry but it’s windy and freaky driving through there and frankly, exceeding the speed limit by 10 miles with all that crap in my car was all I could do. 

Anyway, besides annoying drivers who I mostly let pass me, I loved the drive through those majestic trees.  They were thoroughly gorgeous.  I have no idea how anyone could chop one down, they seem so sacred it makes you play soft music and drive slowly on the road through them.

So, now I’m in Garberville, CA, where the Redwoods are abundant and apparently there’s a drive through the redwoods out here.  Two other places I should mention before describing Garberville – Confusion Hill and the One Log House.  Confusion Hill is that crazy gravity house where water runs uphill and you can climb a wall of the house. It’s very disorienting, but it’s an experience like none other.  The one log house is a house made out of ONE Redwood tree.  WOW!

Oh! I also saw my first hitchhiker ever in one of the towns up here. He was scruffy and red haired with a kind face.  I still didn’t stop, which made me feel bad, but as he drove by he flashed me a peace sign, which was sweet.  Anyway, being a single woman driving with a small dog to keep her company, I’m sure he understood.

Ok, Garberville.  I have to say something about this town.  I’ve never actually seen a hick-town like this.  Population is something like 2000 people.  Can you imagine?  Living around only 2000 people all the time?  I’m pretty sure I’d go stir crazy.  The main industry here is “Wood Products”.  I’m not sure what that means, but I’ve seen several men who look like they’re homeless walking around and they end up not being homeless as they get into a truck or walk into a restaurant.  And a lot of the kids have this horrible, hopeless look in their eyes while others seem defiant in their punk and skater outfits.  It makes me realize that, while I was relieved to “get out” of LA, these kids would probably die just to go their and get out of here.

Anyway, that’s it for me right now. I’m off to The Avenue of the Giants, then over to a beautiful seaside town in Oregon for a bit.  That’s where I’ve been.  Hope you’ve all been well.  There will be new fiction soon.

So… I’m looking around for another market which might like it.  I’m also going to go through it and give it a little revamp to see if there’s anything else that could be edited – though to be honest I’ve done that to a point where I’m kind of sick of the story.

Next, I just submitted a story to Weird Tales.  It’s for their One Minute Weird Tales section, which is pretty cool. I edited the piece and sent it along, feeling pretty good, until I clicked over to my list of things I’ve sent out. Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve sent that to Weird Tales before. This time, however, I’ve renamed it and edited it. So… hopefully this time they’ll like it better. I have a sinking feeling that they won’t though. *Sigh* It’s not my night tonight. Gimme some hot chocolate and let me go to sleep.

BUT, I shall overcome. Some of my favorite podcasts are having an awesome flash fiction contest where a person can submit their fiction and the lovelies at Escape Artists have their listeners decide who should win. I will submit and hopefully I’ll win! I can’t tell you what I’m going to submit, but I suggest that starting April 1st, you get on there and start voting. Maybe you’ll vote mine up! That would be amazing!

Ok, high ho, off to work I go.

I wrote some more on my book last week, but I mostly rewrote a short story called “There’s an Alien in my Bedroom”.  I think it’s pretty awesome, and I kinda wrote it for the Drabblecast, but I need to edit it as it’s a bit too long for that audio-zine. Hopefully it’ll edit down to 2000 words and I’ll get to submit it, since it’s really too weird for any other magazine I can think of.

In other news, I FINALLY talked to my friend who will be doing the photography for my stories up and coming e-book/podiobook extravaganza.  I don’t think I’ve really talked much about it since I’m just in the planning stages, but I think it’s going to be pretty damn awesome.

So… right now I’m going through all the stories I want to put in said e-book, then summarizing them for her so she can go through her massive photo collection and/or get inspired to take some amazingly rockin’ photos of her own.  As soon as she gets a website up, I’ll tell you who she is.

That’s all for now folks… see ya this Sunday for another story.  I’ve noticed I get more readers on the horror, so I’m going to try and stick with that for now.  But I’m not promising anything since I have a sci fi one I really want to put up at some point.  I might try to submit it at a couple places first.

Oh, also, I promised on Facebook that I would write a story about psychotic ponies who attack rainbows while evil fairies put their nefarious plans to destroy the human race into action… or something.  So… I’ll try to work on that one.

As usual, here’s the creative commons shpeel:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

If you cannot read about cannibalism, violence and other disturbing topics, don’t read this story.  If you do not shop in the adult section of the book store, don’t read this story.  If you hate Stephen King or Scott Sigler because they are too gruesome, don’t read this story.

If I haven’t scared you away, check out Child’s Play by yours truly and tell me what you think.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Usually I like to say most of my ideas are inspired by authors I admire, which is totally true. I read A LOT, which is evidenced by my book review blog. But otherwise…

Well, here’s an example. This morning I was driving to work, happily contemplating the awesome 2010 Olympics T-shirt my aunt had kindly picked up for me. My mom picked up the tab. I have cool family. Anyway, I drove past a school I drive by every single day and I saw two fire trucks and an ambulance parked outside. There were no people in them and the wheels were blocked, so I figure it’s some kind of demonstration for the kids in the school. Then, I turn and there’s a police SUV parked right next to the driveway of my office, which happens to be next to a bank. We’ve had police come into our parking lot and stand behind the cement block wall which separates our lot from the bank with loaded rifles and shotguns trained on some bank robber before. So, I thought, Hope nothing’s up with the bank.

Now, here’s the last straw. I unlocked the door to my office and a horrible moldy/rotted smell hit me.

First thought, There was a leak. Twasn’t so.

Next thought, The coffee machine was left on. Again, nope.

Next thought, It smells like the mold is getting moldy. Kind of like that time a rat got trapped in the ceiling above my cube and rotted for a week before anyone could figure out where the smell was coming from.

Next thought, A zombie came in here and died for the second time.  Or it’s lying in wait.

Now I can’t help but weave a story and expect undead children to be attacking the firemen and EMTs at that school down the street.

See why my ideas freak me out sometimes?