My grand plans for 2019 are well underway! I haven’t actually written them down, of course. So I don’t really know exactly what I’m planning yet. But it feels like I’m on track, so I must be. Right? 🙂

My short story “Haunted” is in the latest issue of Fiction River! This is the last of the three short stories I sold at the 2016 WMG Publishing anthology workshop to be published. This story was the last one I sold at that workshop, and it was the very last sale at the workshop. This particular workshop is set up so that there’s a panel of editors who talk about why they would/wouldn’t purchase each story for one of the Fiction River anthology issues; after the other editors give their feedback, the purchasing editor provides theirs, and either purchases a story, passes on it, or puts it on a “maybe” list that they review after they’ve gone through all the stories. The editor for Hard Choices, Dean Wesley Smith, had selected all the stories for his anthology but one, and had narrowed his choice down to my story and one by Laura Ware. He couldn’t decide, and after a moment of thinking “me me me!” I began thinking “pick Laura’s story!” instead. With a bit of encouragement from the other authors in the room Dean decided to break the rules 🙂 and purchased both of our stories.

Afterward Laura and I went to congratulate each other, and it turned out she’d done exactly what I had done—we’d each been hoping Dean would pick the other person’s story! Needless to say, we gave each other a big hug. 🙂 To this day, this is still one of my very favorite moments in my writing career. Laura is a wonderful author and person, and I’m so very happy that she and I are in this anthology together!

Speaking of anthologies, DeAnna Knippling and I have started to work on the next two issues of Amazing Monster Tales, our pulp 1940s-ish monster series. This project is so much fun! With the first issue, we learned a lot about working together. For example, DeAnna is more comfortable than I am with writing things like the vision statement, sales copy, and introduction to the collection, and she’s really good at writing all of this in the style we’re shooting for. I, of course, make the best (and most colorful!) spreadsheets ever. 🙂 Some things still take time, and of course we need to work our tasks around two people’s schedules instead of just one. But creating subsequent issues will be much more streamlined because of our work on the first one.

This weekend will be a three-day weekend from my day job, so while I do have a few fun social things planned with my friends (I learned that lesson in 2018, and am now making a point of scheduling fun time!), I also have a very long list of things I’m going to accomplish. As usual, my list contains way more things than I could accomplish if I spent every waking moment of my long weekend working on it. 🙂 But hey, at least I won’t run out of things to do!