That peculiar-looking item in the photo, dear children, is an old-fashioned contraption called a “typewriter.” When your correspondent was a young man, it was all the rage among writers. If you didn’t have a typewriter, you couldn’t submit stories. (Though if one looked through the Writer’s Market of the day, sometimes you’d see a place that would accept “legible” handwritten material!) (but not anymore).
There was something companionable about a typewriter, the merry tap tap tap as you raced through your manuscript. Somehow, the click click click of a computer doesn’t compare.
This post, however, is not about typewriters or computers or even handwritten manuscripts. It’s about my continuing attempts to get the literary world to pay attention to me. Like a small child stomping its foot, I won’t stop until someone says “What the heck are you whining about?”
First, the best news: My short story “The Beggar Prince” has been accepted by Wolfsinger Press for their dragon anthology “Crunchy with Chocolate.” It is the third of my “Dragon Wife” stories, the first of which was published in Dastaan World (A story which seems to have disappeared from their website. Sigh). When the anthology comes out–the publisher is a one-woman band and she’s very busy right now–you will be the first to know.
I might add that two of my Minerva James stories have been included in Dandelion Revolution Press Anthologies. “Minerva James and the Good Goddess” can be found in “Not Quite as You Were Told,” published last year. This year they have just released “The Secrets We Keep” which includes “Minerva James and the God of Strangers.” Both anthologies can be ordered here. I highly recommend it, as there are other writers with great stories in these books.
I have just been told that my memoir, “My Heart Went Boom: My Life Listening to the Beatles” is “under review” at a small press. This is two months after submission, so I’m hoping this means they’re seriously considering publication. I will not give the name of the press, though, until they say “yes.”
I learned my lesson. I did a whole blog on my little mermaid detective, Mariah Dauphin, and how I was submitting her story to a magazine dedicated to mermaids. Well, they said no. No explanation, but then you rarely get an explanation. So Mariah is still looking for a home.
As for new writing, I’m working on the following–all at the same time: Another SSgt Jackson James novel, “Season of the Witch.” I’m at 8000 words. I’m also working on two memoirs, “Untethered,” about getting fired from my last law firm; and “Love for Beginners,” a memoir of raising my remarkable son. Add to that the thriller “Jackrabbit,” the non-Minerva mystery “Red-Tailed Hawk,” and the embryonic second Minerva novel, “Minerva James and the Goddess of the Hunt” (in which Carson is seduced by a beautiful prosecutor while working on a case for Minerva). Oh, and there’s the other thriller “Child’s Play” and another sex comedy, “The Adventures of Rosie.” I have a comic vampyre novel which hit 10,000 words and stalled, “Pain in the Neck.” I have about 15 short stories in various stages of repair. I started a Vegas detective novel while in that neon city last month, “Vegas Rules.” And…and…and…
You see that writer’s block is no block to me. I need writer’s focus.
Now if I can only get this law practice to stop bothering me…
Mark Bruce, Writer 