I recently finished editing a new short story, and sent it off for review! I think the editors for this collection will like it, but you never know. Or they might like it but feel it’s not a good fit for this particular collection. Having put together a bunch of collections myself, I’ve learned that a story can be fantastic, but if it doesn’t fit the theme, or if it doesn’t mesh well with the other stories, then it’s not a good fit for the collection as a whole. But in this particular case, I can say that my mom likes it, so that’s a win! 🙂

This new story is actually one that I started writing in 2014. I had a full draft, but I’d never made the final editing pass because I always had other projects that had deadlines and homes, whereas I wasn’t quite sure where to submit this one. It’s a post-apocalyptic story, set in our contemporary world, but after a virus has wiped out most of the world’s population. I wanted to focus on what life might be like for someone who’d survived the pandemic—but I also wanted to give the story a more positive spin. We’ll see what the editors of this collection think!

I also recently wrote a historical fantasy story, “The Tommys,” which is in Beasties, the latest issue of the Uncollected Anthology. I had several ideas, and I liked them all, but I just kept feeling like they weren’t quite right for this collection even though they all fit the theme. I finally decided to write a new story using a character I’m considering using for a novel series at some point (in my copious free time…). That was totally the right decision, but it’s a historical fantasy story, and any time I write historical fiction I end up spending a lot of time doing research to get facts right (or at least as right as I’m able to). So the new story took way, way longer to write. 🙂 I really like the end result, though!