Space... The Final Frontier

Now that "The Ever-Present Moment" is out, I can focus my creative attention on my next chapbook, "Dispatches from the Information Age," which I would like to publish in the next six months.

Another stand-in for the cover.

I soon hope to have a more concrete idea of when it will come out, but it is being held up for a good reason---namely so that the journals that are going to publish or are thinking about publishing stories from the collection are able to do so (since they have first rights).

Two more stories from it are going to be published in October, and there is one more I am waiting to hear about. It has been six months, so maybe I should reach out and find out for sure that they have rejected it.

The journal in question only stopped accepting submissions in May, and I submitted my story for the Fall 2016 issue, so I should be hearing soon. It only publishes annually, so they don't move as fast as the quarterly or monthly people, and they have a Submittable, so they should at least mark it as rejected (or accepted) when (or if) they do reject (or accept) it.

Courtesy of Pixabay.com

I have also been thinking about submitting to a few select journals one or two more of the stories from "Dispatches," just to see what happens. You never know. The likelihood is that they will get rejected, but it is not definite. After all, sometimes I am surprised, and my stories don't get rejected. It happens, and there is no way to know until you send them out.

It does take some thick skin, but everyone gets rejected. The writers that "make it" are the ones that keep trying, and keep sending stuff out until they make a name for themselves, and journals start asking them for stuff. I don't know if that will ever happen for me, but I can dream, right?

In the meantime, I  also have to decide for sure on whether or not to continue writing the novel I have been writing. Part of me really wants to ditch it and start on something that more accurately reflects where I am and where I want to go as a writer. While I like literary fiction, I see myself writing more sci-fi and absurd, satirical stories, which seems to be what draws people to me the most.

My current novel is interesting, but no one really reads literature anymore, and those that do could give two shits about my writing, so why would I bother continuing to cater to a market that has no interest in my writing? It doesn't make much sense.

Plus, if I abandon literature and pursue the direction I have been going, I will be building on the audience I have already been building on with the stories that I have thus far gotten published.

Courtesy of Pixabay.

Except for the very first one five years ago, every story that I have written that has been published by others has dealt with topics such as alternate dimensions, Reagan clone invasions, time travel, and distant alien races taking over the galaxy. The next two that are going to be published are about Bigfoot and electronic devices coming alive, so it only continues.

I would rather write for people who want to read what I am writing, and I have always been a fan of sci-fi and the like. While Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury are two of my favorite writers, I am not the best read in this area---however, that can easily change.

So maybe "The Ever-Present Moment" will be my farewell to that style of writing. It's been real, but it hasn't been that fun (overall), and I want to have fun with it and lay off the serious shit for a while.

It sounds like I have already made up my mind. Maybe I have. I guess there is only one way to find out.