You Only Live Twice

Though perhaps not as famous as her husband—at least not until portrayed by Courtney Love in The People vs. Larry Flynt—Althea Flynt served, until her death at 33, as publisher or co-publisher of Hustler and other magazines the Flynts produced under various corporate names. She was, at the time I placed my first mystery in the January 1983 issue of Gentleman’s Companion, that magazine’s co-publisher. Though I never had direct contact with her, Althea was responsible for the creation of my series character Christian Gunn and my brief foray into spy fiction.

Though not as famous as their brother Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse and other magazines, twin-sisters Jackie Lewis and Jeri Winston published a string of sex letter magazines and, in December 1984, stepped outside the sex genre with the launch of Espionage Magazine, a digest-sized periodical filled with spy stories. Editor/Publisher Jackie Lewis, through Espionage, was instrumental in the continued life and ultimate death of Christian Gunn.
   
THE GUNN GETS LOADED

I had, in January 1983, effectively jump-started my professional fiction-writing career with the publication of “City Desk” in Gentleman’s Companion (see “Ripples”), and I soon placed a second story in the magazine. Though for quite some time Gentleman’s Companion headed the list of publications to which I targeted new stories, I ultimately only placed three stories within its pages.

In a letter from Gentleman’s Companion Managing Editor Ted Newsom, dated March 11, 1983, in which he rejects “A Matter of Policy” (a story that later appeared in the February 1985 Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine), he notes, “The last word I got on what Althea wants [...] is that she wanted the stories ‘lahk Jaimes Bound ounlie sexier.’” In the letter, Ted also suggests that I submit stories to Hustler, Gentleman’s Companion’s better-paying sister magazine.

I had never written a spy story, but was game to try. Coincidentally, less than two weeks after I received Ted’s letter, “The Spy Who Lay Dead in The Snow,” by Kim Rogal and Ron Moreau, appeared in the March 28, 1983, issue of Newsweek. The article began:

“On a lonely Alpine road north of Nice, the snowplow operator found a parked Peugeot 305, empty, its radio still blaring. Nearby lay a dark bundle that might have been a crumpled overcoat, except for the red stain in the snow. When the gendarmes arrived, they found a body sprawled face down in the fresh powder. Six feet away, they picked up a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum that had fired three shots. The gas tank in the car read empty. Money and keys remained in the victim’s pocket and there were no signs of a struggle. The police suspected suicide—until they found out who the dead man was: Lt. Col. Bernard Nut, 47, a senior operative in the French Secret Service.”

Once I read that article, I knew I had a hook for my first spy story, and I began writing:

“Lt. Col. Eduard Paroldi, a senior operative with the French secret service, sat in his Peugot 305, nervously tapping his fingers against the steering wheel. He had been parked on the shoulder of the lonely Alpine highway for almost three hours and his stomach was growling. Eduard dug in the pocket of his heavy overcoat for the last bite of a chocolate bar he’d been slowly nibbling at during his wait.”

Paroldi is dead by the end of the first scene, and Christian Gunn, an American operative, is sent to determine who killed him and why. Gunn mixes with British, German, and Russian agents in a wild tale of cross and double-cross.

On August 8, 1983, I completed and submitted “With Extreme Prejudice” to Hustler.

Six weeks later it came back with a form rejection.

Why I didn’t turn around and submit the story to Ted at Gentleman’s Companion I can’t determine from my records. Instead, I removed the graphic sexual content and sent “With Extreme Prejudice” to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and then to The Saint Magazine, both of which turned it around within a week of submission.

On November 19, 1983, I submitted the story to Mike Shayne, and a postcard from Editor Charles E. Fritch, dated May 6, 1984, notified me of the story’s acceptance.

“With Extreme Prejudice,” the first Christian Gunn story, appeared in the August 1984 Mike Shayne, the second of four stories I placed there. Unfortunately, the magazine was, by then, on its last legs, ending its run in August 1985.
   
THE GUNN GETS RELOADED

By 1984 I was writing for a handful of sex letter digests, including those published by Jackie Lewis and her sister. When the sisters announced they were acquiring stories for their new spy digest, I thought I had an in. I had already published a handful of mystery short stories, including one about a spy, and I had already written for their other publications.

So, I brought Christian Gunn back for “The Only Good Red”:

“Dmitri Sakharov, a low-level member of the KGB, sat on the upper deck of the McDonald’s paddle steamboat and stared out at the swollen Mississippi River. On the table before him was a half-eaten Quarterpounder and an untouched bag of fries. A small Coke was securely captured in one slender fist.”

True to form, by the end of the first scene Sakharov is dead and, once again, Christian Gunn is sent to determine who killed him and why. And, once again, Gunn is caught in a wild tale of cross and double-cross.

I submitted “The Only Good Red” to Espionage on June 21, 1984, and, in a letter from Jackie Lewis dated June 28, 1984, learned of its acceptance.

“The Only Good Red,” the second Christian Gunn story, appeared in the February 1985 Espionage, the first of two stories I placed in the magazine.
   
THE GUNN FIRES BLANKS

I aimed to feature Christian Gunn in additional short stories—I found in my files, while preparing this, notes for two stories (“Mockingbird Don’t Sing” and “Number Four with a Bullet”)—but I did not complete another before the 1987 collapse of Espionage effectively killed Gunn’s career and the 1989 collapse of the Berlin Wall sucked the life out of spy fiction.

Though Christian Gunn only lived twice, I did write two additional spy stories—“Only Heroes Die,” published in the November 1985 Espionage, and “Soft Focus,” accepted by Espionage in a letter dated March 14, 1985, but unpublished when the magazine ceased operation. “Soft Focus” saw publication, at long last, in the July 2002 Detective Mystery Stories.

So, was Christian Gunn “lahk Jaimes Bound ounlie sexier”?

I like to think so.

“With Extreme Prejudice,” “The Only Good Red,” and ten other stories from the early years of my career are collected in Bad Girls (Wildside Press, 2000), available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle editions.
   
Learn more about the short life of Espionage as told by one of its most prolific contributors: “I Spy: A Writer Remembers Espionage Magazine,” by Josh Pachter, appears in the January 2018 The Digest Enthusiast. Order a hardcopy or Kindle edition at Amazon.

Three Typewriters and a Desk

Michael and his mother, Myrta, September 6, 1963.

My mother, Myrta, died when I was 17. She suffered from mitral valve stenosis and died during or immediately following surgery to correct this problem. She never saw my first professional publication, but she was instrumental in my success—not just for encouraging my dream, but also for repeatedly providing me with the tools for success.

This is the story of three typewriters and a desk.

THE BEAST

My mother presented me with my first typewriter when I was attending sixth grade at Sherman Elementary in Tacoma, Washington. I don’t know where she found the hulking black beast (it may have been an Underwood) that dominated my tiny desk from the moment it arrived, but on it I taught myself to type by hunting and pecking at the keys.

Though I did not know then that I wanted to be a writer, I was the only sixth-grader in my school typing his homework assignments, and I continued using the hulking black beast as its mechanical parts degenerated to the point where I had to type by striking the keys with the ball-peen side of a ball-peen hammer.

 On it, I typed my first short story, “The 1812 Battle at Two Rocks.” This is the story I showed my mother when I told her I wanted to be a writer.

THE PORTABLE

The beast did not travel with us when we left Tacoma and moved to Ft. Bragg, California, partway through ninth grade. That Christmas my mother gave me my second typewriter, a small blue portable (it may have been a Smith-Corona) that bounced across my desk when I typed because I still pounded typewriter keys as if I were assaulting the hulking black beast of my youth.

On it, I wrote “The Magic Stone,” which became my first professional short story sale. A children’s fantasy, elements of “The Magic Stone” were taken directly from an experience I shared with my mother when I was in grade school.

THE SELECTRIC

After my mother’s death, I returned to Tacoma to live with my grandparents, and later moved to Glen Carbon, Illinois, to attend Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. I dropped out during the first quarter of my second year and moved to Collinsville, Illinois. In early 1978, my stepfather and I settled the medical malpractice suit filed following my mother’s death, and I used some of the money I received to purchase two filing cabinets I still use, the desk at which I sit as I write this, and a blue, wide-carriage, IBM Correcting Selectric II.

On it, I wrote “City Desk,” which became my second professional short story sale and first mystery. I wrote a great many other stories on the Selectric before I replaced it with a DOS-based personal computer running WordStar. During the years since, I’ve owned and used many PCs and Macintoshes, and now use Microsoft Word rather than WordStar.

THE DESK

Ellie, Michael's frequent writing companion, under the desk.

Though I still own the Selectric, it no longer functions properly and sits on a shelf in the closet. The desk I purchased with money from the malpractice suit—a black steel office desk with a faux wood-grain top and a secretarial arm—has traveled with me through several residences in Illinois, two in Mississippi, and two in Texas, and I have written all or part of every story since 1978 while sitting at this desk.

THE RESULT

My mother did not live to see the writer I’ve become—and I’ve written a few things I never would have shown her if she had!—but she’s been with me for the entire journey. Her literal heart may have failed her, but her figurative heart—her soul—remains.

Ripples

A single event in a writer’s life can create career-long ripples much like a pebble tossed in a pond causes ripples upon the water.

Michael Bracken teaching "Getting Your Short Stories Published,"
SIU-Edwardsville, April 4, 1985.
Photo by Kevin S. Kantola

Five years into my writing career I had a single professional fiction sale, one attributable to an act of literary crime (see “Smooth Criminal”). I was placing other writing in professional, paying markets—poetry in Intimate Romances, Intimate Secrets, and True Secrets; humor in Catholic Digest, Genesis, Hustler, Orben’s Current Comedy, The Saturday Evening Post, and other publications; and I even wrote a few gag lines for a pair of men’s magazine cartoonists. I had a handful of stories published in Shadows Of..., a science fiction/fantasy semi-prozine, but my professional fiction writing career seemed to have peaked with the publication of that single story in Young World.

A PEBBLE STRIKES THE WATER...

Having no luck with traditional SF/F publications, I expanded my submission list to include men’s magazines that published fiction.

During early 1976—less than a year after high school graduation—I wrote a pair of science fiction stories: “On the Blink” received 12 rejections and “Nothing is Ever Easy” received eight before I stopped submitting them in 1981, convinced that neither would ever sell. In 1982, I used pieces of both stories to write “Going Down,” a 4,000-word erotic science fiction story, and on May 11, 1982, submitted it to Gentleman’s Companion.

The manuscript returned two months later, but this rejection was unlike any other I had ever received. Ted Newsom, managing editor of Gentleman’s Companion, had retitled, rewritten, and retyped the entire manuscript. His rejection letter dated July 26, 1982, read:

Enclosed please find the return of your manuscript, GOING DOWN. The ms. was well liked by our editorial staff but after a title change and necessary reworks, it was denied by our Publisher. We feel that the reworks should help it find a home with another publication and we sincerely wish you the best of luck. 

We would like to see other submissions from you and thanks for your interest in GC.

Though I had received several personal rejections prior to this, many with useful suggestions about how to improve my work, no editor had ever torn one of my stories apart and put it back together the way Ted had. I studied each of his changes, determined to understand why he made them and to utilize what I learned when writing my next story.

When telling the story of why I wrote my first mystery, I’ve often said that “The Dregs” (the retitle of “Going Down”) was rejected because the publisher of Gentleman’s Companion didn’t want science fiction. As evidenced by the rejection letter quoted above, this may not be true.

Regardless, at the time I received Ted’s revision of “The Dregs,” there was, sitting on the corner of my desk, the first scene of a story I had abandoned because it was neither science fiction nor fantasy. Utilizing everything I learned from reading Ted’s revision of “The Dregs,” I wrote and submitted “City Desk,” a 4,400-word erotic mystery about newspaper reporter Dan Fox.

Ted accepted “City Desk,” paid $300 (the most I had ever received for a single piece of writing to that point), and published the story in the January 1983 issue of Gentleman’s Companion.

…THE RIPPLES BEGAN…

Ted Newsom’s rejection and revision of “The Dregs” led to a decades-long career with ripples expanding in multiple directions.

Mike Shayne
Mystery Magazine
October 1983

I became a mystery writer. Gentleman’s Companion published “Adam’s Rib,” my second mystery, in March 1983, and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine published my third, “Vengeance To Show In The Third,” in October 1983. I’ve since published mysteries in several anthologies and traditional mystery publications such as Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Crime Square (Vantage Point), Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, and Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin (Mysterious Press).

I became a science fiction writer when Gentleman’s Companion—with a new publisher and new editor—published “The Dregs” in March 1985 and Oui published “Microchick” in April 1985.

I became a horror writer when Charles L. Grant included “Of Memories Dying” in Midnight (Tor Books), released in February 1985.

I became a men’s magazine writer, placing crime fiction, horror, and science fiction in publications such as Fling, Gent, Hustler Fantasies, Juggs, Max, Penthouse Letters, Score, Voluptuous, and other publications.

I became an erotica writer, with stories in several anthologies and periodicals such as Chic Letters, Playgirl, and Screw.

I became a novelist when Books in Motion released Deadly Campaign in 1994, a mystery featuring Dan Fox, the protagonist of “City Desk.”

I became a series writer, using Dan Fox for two additional short stories, and then writing several stories about St. Louis-based P.I. Nathaniel Rose—collected in Tequila Sunrise (Wildside Press)—and several more about Waco-based P.I. Morris Ronald “Moe Ron” Boyette.

I became a confession writer, with stories published in Black Confessions, True Confessions, True Experience, True Love, True Story, and many other women’s magazines.

In short, I became a writer.

...AND THEY NEVER END

A single story. A single editor. A single rejection.

The ripples from that event continue to impact my writing career, a career I might not have were it not for Ted Newsom’s revision of a single rejected story.

After all, writing about it is just one more ripple.

About a year before his passing, Ed Gorman selected “City Desk” for inclusion in Bad Business, a collection of stories that first appeared in men’s magazines when they published stories with a bit of sex rather than sex with a bit of story. Co-edited by Peter Crowther, the anthology will be released by PS Publishing.

Smooth Criminal

I have long participated in SleuthSayers, commenting on posts and occasionally writing guest posts, but this marks my debut as an official member of the tribe. Thanks, y’all, for inviting me to join.

I wrote my first professionally published story when I was 17, sold it when I was 18, and saw it published when I was 19. That’s the story I tell, and the story I’ll continue to tell, but it isn’t the truth. The truth is more complex and involves my committing one of the worst crimes a writer can commit short of plagiarism.

But let’s back up to the beginning.

Michael Bracken, pre-publication

My parents divorced well before I entered kindergarten, and the late ’50s and early ’60s were not filled with opportunities for single mothers. We were poor, we moved often, and we had limited entertainment choices. (We did not own a television until I was in the third grade, but we did curl up in my mother’s bed late on Saturday nights to listen to rebroadcasts of old radio dramas.) So, my mother taught me to read, and one of the first things we did each time we moved was locate the nearest library.

Through reading, I could be anyone, go anywhere, and do anything.

TRANSITIONING

Like many of us, I knew at an early age that I wanted to be a writer. Unlike most, I began seeking publication almost immediately.

When I was in the eighth grade, I wrote my first short story, “The 1812 Battle at Two Rocks.” In ninth grade, my junior high school’s literary magazine published one of my poems. (Unfortunately, many years ago a flood that destroyed much of my early, pre-publication writing also destroyed my first publication.) I contributed to my high school’s literary magazine, wrote for (and later edited) my high school newspaper, wrote for an underground newspaper while in high school, and published a science fiction fanzine while contributing to other fanzines.

Bracken's first pro rejection

I also began submitting fiction to professional publications, receiving my first rejection from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in September 1974. So, while other young men my age were tossing footballs and sinking free throws, I spent my high school years pounding the keyboard.

The rejections piled up.

GOING PRO

During the spring and summer of 1976, I wrote “The Magic Stone”—a 1,200-word fantasy about a young boy, an elderly woman, and a magic stone—and submitted it to various SF/F magazines. After the story earned several rejections, I sent it to Donn Brazier, who published “The Magic Stone” in the February 1977 issue of his fanzine Farrago. (Farrago, a limited-circulation amateur publication produced on a photocopier, was an offshoot of his more popular fanzine Title.) The response was positive, and someone suggested “The Magic Stone” was a wonderful children’s story.

Young World, November 1978

I’m not certain I knew then that what I was about to do was wrong, but I submitted the story to several children’s magazines without mentioning that it had already been published. When Young World accepted the story, I remained mum, and by the time “The Magic Stone” appeared in the November 1978 issue, I was 21 and fully committed to my crime.

TURNING LEGIT

So, the truth is that I wrote “The Magic Stone” when I was 18, it was first published when I was 19, but it didn’t achieve professional publication until I was 21.

Though my professional writing career began with a literary crime, I didn’t become a crime fiction writer until several years later. Next time, I’ll explain how and why I made the transition.

I am currently reading submissions for The Eyes of Texas, an anthology of private eye stories that Down & Out Books will release at the 2019 Bouchercon in Dallas. The deadline is November 30, and the guidelines and answers to FAQs can be found here: http://www.crimefictionwriter.com/TheEyesOfTexas.htm.

One More Time, From the Top

Please join me in welcoming my friend Michael Bracken as a guest blogger today. For those of you who don't know Michael already, he has written several books but is better known as the author of more than 1,200 short stories. He's recently had stories published in, or accepted for publication by, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Snowbound, Noir at the Salad Bar, Passport to Murder, Tough, Weirdbook, and other anthologies and periodicals. He is currently reading submissions for The Eyes of Texas, an anthology of private eye stories that Down & Out Books will release at Bouchercon 2019. You can find the submission guidelines here.

One more thing: Michael will be officially joining SleuthSayers next month as a regular columnist. All of us at the SS asylum are of course thrilled about that, and hoping he doesn't come to his senses in time to back out. (As for me, I'll return in two weeks.) --John Floyd

_______________________________________________________

by Michael Bracken


I've had a good run. Since my first professional sale in the late 1970s, I've sold more than 1,200 short stories, and through October 2017 I've had one or more short stories published each month for 172 consecutive months. This long streak of good fortune may soon end.

In an October 23, 2013, guest post for John Floyd here at SleuthSayers, I wrote about the ladder a short-story writer climbs from being a "write-first, market-second" writer to becoming a "market-first, write-second" writer, and I gave several examples of how I had reached a point where most of my short fiction was written to order, to invitation, or for repeat markets.

I also noted that "[p]ublishing is changing and everything I know about it may be obsolete before the year ends." I was only off by a few years.

During the past two years, the foundation of my writing career crumbled beneath me. Anthology editors who often invited me to contribute are no longer editing anthologies, and magazines I counted on for multiple sales each month have ceased publication. Some genres in which I had established myself have disappeared or are clinging to life only in low- or non-paying markets.

In many ways, I am starting over, rebooting my career by once again becoming a "write-first, market-second" short-story writer. The only advantage I have over a beginning writer is that past sales prove I can write publishable fiction. What I do not yet know is how well I can write publishable fiction in new or long-neglected genres. So, for the first time in years, I am actually nervous when I submit stories, and each time I receive a response I have a moment of trepidation just before I open the email.

I'm not taking my situation lightly, and I have a plan. Following are the key steps I'm taking to restart my writing career:


FINISH WHAT I SET ASIDE

Over the years I left many stories unfinished because there were no discernable markets for them. Rather than let these stories continue to languish, I returned to several of them, finished them, and sent them into the world, following the traditional path of submitting to the best market first and working my way down the markets as rejections roll in.

Outcome: Since the reboot I have sold a handful of newly finished stories.


WRITE WHAT INSPIRES ME

Relying on inspiration as motivation is degraded as the amateur's approach to writing because perspiration creates more work than inspiration. Even so, a working writer should never dismiss inspiration. Occasionally, a story idea comes unbidden, and I am so taken by it that I find myself driven to write. In the past, I set these inspired stories aside in favor of sure-bet sales. Now, I let inspiration take me where it will.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold five inspired stories.


WRITE TO SPECIFICATIONS

This is what I advocated beginning and early career writers do back in 2013 when I laid out the steps for transitioning from a write-first, market-second writer to a market-first, write-second writer.

I spend time surfing the Internet seeking anthology open submission calls and submission guidelines from publications with which I am not already familiar. I study guidelines, read publications when they exist, and then, as best I can, write stories that fit the guidelines.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold three stories written to open-call anthology specifications.


REPURPOSE OR RESUBMIT UNSOLD WORK

In addition to seeking markets to which I might send completed but unsold stories, I also continually compare submission guidelines to finished work to determine if anything I have could be revised and repurposed. Occasionally, I can.

Outcome: Since the reboot, I have sold one repurposed story and one story that had been languishing in my files before I discovered a new market.


EXAMINE THE RESULTS

Without detailing every sale and rejection since the beginning of my career reboot--and, trust me, rejections outnumber the sales--let's examine my experience with a single periodical: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

Five years passed between my previous rejected submission to AHMM and the first submission after my career reboot, and I've submitted eight stories since the reboot. Three are awaiting a decision, two have been rejected, and three have been accepted.

The first acceptance, published last year ("Chase Your Dreams," AHMM, June 2016), is a repurposed story originally written in another genre. The first third and last third are essentially as first written, but I extensively revised the middle third before submitting to AHMM, and then revised the middle third again at Linda Landrigan's suggestion to move it even further from its original genre.

The second story accepted by AHMM is an inspired story, one that came to me as an opening image with a character facing a life-altering loss.

The third story accepted by AHMM is one I began, set aside, and returned to several years later.

Outcome: Were any of these three written to specifications? Other than representing various sub-genres of crime fiction and fitting within the magazines's length requirements, no. I have yet to find strong commonalities among the stories AHMM publishes. On the other hand, the three stories AHMM accepted share something the two stories rejected do not, so I am developing a profile of which stories are more likely and which stories are less likely to be accepted if submitted to AHMM.


CHANGE MY ATTITUDE

There is a fine line between being confident and being cocky, and it was easy to cross that line when almost everything I wrote sold to the first editor who saw it. I'm still confident, but my wife tells me I'm not so cocky.

Previously, I would submit and forget, but now I fret about each submission, and I sweat rejections in a way I haven't for at least a decade. When rejections are more common than acceptances, they carry more weight, and that weight forces me to examine my stories and my marketing efforts to determine if rejected stories are flawed or if my submission targeting is flawed.

I am working harder than before because I want to regain my status as a market-first, write-second short-story writer. Alas, that may never happen. I worked for thirty-plus years to reach that point, and I enjoyed the ride for nearly ten years. Having just turned 60, I might not have another thirty years of writing left in me, and, having done it once, I know there is no shortcut back to that level.

On the other hand, I think I've written some of my best work since the foundation of my writing career crumbled beneath me. I've been forced to examine the market for short fiction from a different perspective, and I've been forced to reexamine how and why I write. While I still have my eye on the markets, I'm producing more work aimed at pleasing myself first and then hoping I find editors to publish it.

And I have a plan. If I follow it, maybe--just maybe--it won't take thirty years to climb back to the top of the ladder and once again be a market-first, write-second writer.

Black Cats and Roosters

Robert Lopresti mentioned here at SleuthSayers a few weeks ago that he enjoys reading behind-the-scenes reports about the writing of short stories. Where authors get their ideas, where they find their characters, how they come up with titles, how/why they construct plots in a certain way. And Art Taylor's column yesterday featured some of those stories-within-the-stories from the current Anthony Award nominees.

I agree with Rob, and Art too--I think that kind of thing is fascinating. Because of that (and because I couldn't think of anything else to write about, for today), I decided to post a "look-inside" view of my short story "Rooster Creek," which appears in the current, and debut, issue of Black Cat Mystery Magazine.

First, a word about that issue. One of the thrills, for me, of being included there was the fact that just about every author in the story lineup is a friend of mine. I've always especially enjoyed reading stories written by people I already know, and this was a chance for me to do a lot of that. I'd like to take this opportunity to once again thank John Betancourt and Carla Coupe of Wildside Press for allowing me a spot at the table with such talented writers.


Story time

"Rooster Creek" is a 7500-word tale that combines three genres: western, mystery, and (to a lesser degree) romance. That was an easy choice for me, since (1) I've always been crazy about westerns, probably because I grew up watching so many on primetime TV; (2) I'm sappy enough to like a good love story; and (3) one of the job requirements of working in the SleuthSayers asylum is a fondness for anything with an element of mystery/suspense.

Here's a quick description of my story: After the death of her mother, twentysomething Katie Harrison is traveling cross-country by stagecoach to live with her older sister, and stops along the way to visit her childhood home. She runs into a multitude of problems, including the theft of her cash and luggage, and is forced to remain at the remote homestead as a servant to its current owners, Maureen and Jesse Carter, until she can earn enough in wages to continue her passage west. At the core of the story is a mystery: the Carters' former housemaid has disappeared, and Katie soon suspects that she's been murdered. With the help of two unlikely allies--a giant black handyman named Booley Jones and a traveling firearms-salesman named Clay Wallace--Katie burrows deeper into the strange lives of her employers/captors, and she eventually winds up alone and fighting for her life.

Structurewise, I decided early on that this story needed to be "framed" such that it begins very near the end then flashes back to the beginning and tells the story in the past. The action then builds to the point where the reader left off, and the climax and conclusion follow shortly afterward. This nonlinear approach--the first scene is sort of a glimpse-into-the-future prologue--doesn't always work, but when it does, I think it can make for more effective storytelling. I hope that's what I accomplished here.


Getting started

Having said that, here are the opening paragraphs of the story:


Katie Harrison swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and looked out at the greenish-brown plains and hills stretching away to the horizon. Sparrows flitted and chirped in the branches overhead, and even in the dappled shade the midday sun was warm on her shoulders. But Katie barely heard the birds, barely felt the heat.

Underneath her feet, the chair shifted an inch, and her heart lurched. She winced as the noose tightened around her neck. The fingernails of her bound hands bit into her palms, behind her back. Then the wobbly chair on which she stood stabilized and she let herself breathe again. Above her, although she couldn't see it, the rope was looped over the limb of an oak that had once supported a wooden swing that she'd played on as a child, twenty years ago.

Ten feet away and to her left, a silent and stonefaced woman with red hair sat and watched from a second chair. Beside the redheaded woman stood a huge black man in a battered hat and bib overalls. His face, usually relaxed and peaceful, had a pained look. Katie had met both of them only a month earlier, after she'd trudged empty-handed and muddy all the way up the wagon-rutted road from the town of Perdition. Only a month. In one sense, the time had passed quickly; in another, it seemed like years since she stopped down off the stagecoach from Lincoln Wells and asked the old fellow behind the counter in the stage office where she could hire a buggy to take her up the old north road.

Ain't much out that way, he had said to her, hunched over his paperwork.

I know, she'd replied. That's where I grew up.



And then we hop back to a scene with her in the stagecoach office, and the real adventure begins there.

Plot and characters

Another point, about the structure of this story. As in most novels and screenplays and in some longer short-stories, a lot of elements of the mythic-structure/heroic-journey model apply here. First, in Act 1, there's the heroine's usual and uncomplicated life, then a "disturbance" that upsets the routine (in this case, her inability to rent transportation to get her where she wants to go), then an unexpected encounter (with a young boy who needs her help) which delays her acceptance of the "call to adventure," and finally her eventual crossing-the-threshold transition into unfamiliar and threatening territory. Act 2 features the appearance of mentors and allies (a kindly hired hand and a traveling gun salesman), several run-ins with evil forces, steadily rising action, and finally a crisis/setback that paves the way for the climax. Then, in Act 3, there's the final confrontation between the heroine and the villain and the heroine's later return, as an older and wiser person, to her everyday, pre-adventure life. The old hero's-journey template still works.

I knew before I started writing "Rooster Creek" that I wanted the protagonist to be a strong-willed young woman, which is a little unusual for me, and it turned out later that the main antagonist was a woman as well, which was a lot unusual for me. But it seemed to fit, and the more I got into writing about the villain the more I could see her and hear her. I even had the villain always speaking of herself in the third person, which (as fellow SleuthSayer Janice Law and I discussed, when we talked about this), made her seem not only weird but even more sinister. These crazy little extra "quirks" can be the difference, I've found, between a merely okay character and a really vivid character. Janet Hutchings told me a couple of years ago that one reason she bought one of my mysteries for EQMM was that my main female character was seven feet tall. But that--literally--is another story.

The hired hand in this piece, Booley Jones, is a composite of a number of folks I knew, growing up in small-town Mississippi, and the same is true for some of the other characters. As for detailed descriptions of the players, I never do much of that. I can see these people clearly in my imagination as I'm writing about them, but I think it's important that the reader be allowed the freedom to also imagine what they look like. Stephen King once said, in his book On Writing, "I'd rather let the reader supply the faces, the builds, and the clothing as well." I'm no Stephen King, but I think that's good advice.


Entitlement

One more thing. The title of this story was a result of my not being able to decide on a satisfactory title even after the writing was finished. I tried using embedded phrases, characters' names, double meanings. and just about every other technique, and when nothing worked, I came up with the name of a geographical feature instead--Rooster Creek--and went back and set the house and farm and most of the action alongside its willow-shaded banks. Sometimes simple is best.

And that's the story of my story. If you read it, I hope you'll like it, and even if you don't read it (or don't like it), be sure to read the other stories in the magazine. John and Carla have put together a great debut issue.

Long live Black Cat Mystery Magazine.

Introducing Black Cat Mystery Magazine

It's not everyday you get to blog about the premier issue of a new magazine, especially on the very day it's scheduled to launch. And it's especially exciting when the magazine is coming from a publisher that's been around for nearly thirty years, so you can feel confident that the magazine should have staying power.

Well, this is that day. Welcome to the world, Black Cat Mystery Magazine!

The brainchild of Wildside Press publisher John Betancourt and Wildside editor Carla Coupe, the magazine is expected to come out quarterly. The first issue features new stories from fellow SleuthSayers John Floyd and Art Taylor, as well as one from me. (More on that below.) The other authors with new stories in the issue are Dan Andriacco, Michael Bracken, Kaye George, Meg Opperman, Alan Orloff, and Josh Pachter.

Editor Carla Coupe was kind enough to answer some questions about this new venture.

Why did you decide to start this magazine?
To provide an outlet for great short fiction, which we love. We decided to launch Black Cat when certain other mystery magazines cut their publication schedules in half. 

​How do you hope to distinguish BCMM from other mystery magazines?

We're focusing on edgier, noir-tinged, character-based short stories—which happen to contain a crime of some sort. (A crime is essential, or it isn't mystery fiction.) We don't want fantasy, horror, science fiction, routine revenge stories, or sadism. We do want stories with characters who feel real, in situations that are possible (and plausible), and of course great writing.

Do you have a minimum or maximum word count? How about a sweet spot?

​We’re looking for contemporary and traditional mysteries, as well as thrillers and suspense stories. We hope to feature stories by established and new authors, and will include a classic reprint or two in each issue. We aren’t looking for flash fiction, and our sweet spot is for stories between 1,000 and 8,000 words. We will look at material up to 15,000 words in length—but it better blow us away to take up that much of an issue!

 

Where will the magazine be available for sale? Bookstores?
It will be for sale at our website (http://wildsidepress.com/magazines/black-cat-mystery-magazine/), on Amazon, and hopefully some independent bookstores. US readers can buy a four-issue subscription, so they won't miss any.


You're aiming for it to come out quarterly?
Yes, but as with all our publications, we're not wedded to a strict schedule.


When will submission guidelines go up?
Hopefully this week.

When will you open for submissions?
We'll start accepting submissions at the beginning of October.

Do you make the acceptance decisions alone or with John?
We make the decisions together, and so far have agreed on almost every story!


What do you pay?
We pay 3 cents/word, with a maximum of $250.

Is there anything you'd like people to know about the magazine that I haven't asked?
John thinks the response times are often unreasonably long in the short fiction field. Our goal is to respond to most submissions within 2 weeks. (We're going to try for "all submissions"—but in rare circumstances we may take longer.) We also will look at poetry ($5 for short poems, more for longer ones) and cartoons.

Thank you, Carla!


So, readers, here's your chance to read some great fiction in this brand new issue, which is already available for sale on the Wildside website (http://wildsidepress.com/magazines/black-cat-mystery-magazine/), and which should show up any moment now on Amazon, if it isn't there already. My story in the issue, "Crazy Cat Lady," is a tale of psychological suspense about a woman who comes home and immediately suspects there's been a break-in, even though everything looks perfectly in order. Go pick up a copy of the magazine. I hope you enjoy it!

Art, John, and all the other authors with stories in this premier issue, I hope you'll comment with information about your tales. I'm so glad to be sharing this moment with you.

I Confess

by Michael Bracken

    At the 2016 Bouchercon I received the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction. While I’ve done pretty well writing short crime fiction, it represents less than ten percent of the 1,200-plus short stories I’ve placed since I began my professional writing career in the late 1970s.

    In addition to writing for several anthologies, my fiction has appeared in digest-sized fiction periodicals, supermarket checkout-line tabloids, and slick consumer magazines. I’ve written for readers of all ages, both genders, multiple sexual orientations, and a variety of ethnicities.

    Of all the genres of fiction I’ve written, though, I’ve probably had my greatest success in a sub-genre of women’s fiction known as confessions– so much so that several years ago, when I had only published 170 of them, I was dubbed “The King of Confessions” (“Diversify Your Career: Exploring Fiction-Writing Options” by Vivi Anna, Romance Writers Report, July 2010).

    Now with more than 400 confessions published, another handful under contract, and several more sitting in the editor’s inbox, and with only two confession magazines still publishing original work, I’m confident that no one will steal my crown any time soon.

The True Story

    The first confession magazine ever published, and one of the two still published monthly, is True Story. Launched in 1919 by Bernarr Macfadden, True Story became one of many similar magazines produced by a variety of publishers. When I began writing for confession magazines in 1981, only a few years after my professional writing debut in Young World and long past the genre’s heyday, there were still more than a dozen confession magazines, published by at least four different companies, voraciously sucking up content.

    Though not every magazine was monthly, the confession magazines were easily publishing more than 1200 short stories each year, and many of them also published poetry, recipes, and various kinds of non-fiction. The magazines in other genres--fantasy, horror, science fiction, mystery, etc.– did not publish as much fiction in a single genre each year as the confession magazines did. For a young fiction writer seeking publication, it made sense to try every possible publication in every possible genre. So I did.

    In February 1981, my poem “A Dozen Roses” appeared in True Secrets, and five more poems appeared in confession magazines that year. I also sold my first confession in 1981, but the publisher went bankrupt, and I still don’t know if the story was ever published. I had to wait until July 1984, when my story “Your Eyes Tell Me What Your Lips Can’t Say…” appeared in Secrets, to make my confirmable debut as a confession writer. A year passed before my second confession appeared, and two more years passed before my third and fourth were published. Three years elapsed before my fifth confession appeared in print and I’ve had several confessions published every year –except 2002– since then.

Only Your Hairdresser Knows for Sure

    I probably read my first confession magazines while waiting for my mother and grandmother at the hair salon. They were scandalous publications with lurid come-on lines enticing readers to delve into the debauched lives of the female contributors who were confessing their sins. Alas, the stories were never as lurid as the titles. I once sold a story with the working title, “I Slept with My Son, Now My Husband Won’t Sleep with Me,” which sounds like the author is revealing an incestuous relationship, but is actually about a young mother who takes her newborn son into the family bed while the new father sleeps in the other room.

Sin, Suffer, Repent

    Confession magazines such as Intimate Romances, Intimate Secrets, True Experience, True Love, True Romance, True Secrets, and True Story targeted a white female readership. Magazines such as Black Romance, Bronze Thrills, and Jive targeted a black female readership. They all shared, and the surviving magazines still share, the same conceit: That the stories contained within their pages are “true.”

    And readers believe it.

    Certain genre conventions make these stories believable. They are all written in first person (most often with a female narrator), in a colloquial style, about matters of interest to blue-collar, middle-class woman. Nothing in a confession can be unrealistic (for example, cancer goes into remission but is never cured).

    Once upon a time, confessions followed a similar plotline, known as “sin, suffer, repent.” A woman does something outside the bounds of polite society, she suffers for her actions, and then she repents. In a story from the 1950s, for example, an unmarried young woman becomes pregnant, is sent away to a home where she gives birth to a baby she gives up for adoption, and returns home a changed woman.

    Modern confessions rarely follow the old sin-suffer-repent plotline, and are more likely to be problem stories– woman has a problem, explores various solutions to her problem, and then solves her problem (an unmarried pregnant woman must decide whether to terminate the pregnancy, give the baby up for adoption, or raise the baby as a single mother; she chooses one and is either happy or unhappy with her choice) or romances written in first person (girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy back).

    Other genres can also influence confessions. I’ve written mysteries, thrillers, and horror stories all while adhering to confession genre conventions.

Means, Motive, Opportunity

    With only two confession magazines still publishing monthly– True Confessions and True Story– and with long-time confession writers such as me filling many of the 240 annual slots, the opportunity for new writers to break in is much diminished from when I started in the 1980s. Even so, it is possible.

    But is it worthwhile?

    That’s a tough call. The average response time for one of my submissions is 107 days, but I had one story accepted 542 days after submission, so response time can be slow. The magazines pay 3¢ a word for all rights, and payment arrives several months following publication.

    Also, you won’t see a byline. After all, these stories are supposed to be “true.”

    On the flip side, if you can master the style and can produce work at a steady pace, you might become a regular contributor with regular income. I once calculated that I earn $20+/hour when I write confessions, which is as good as or better than what I earn on an hourly basis writing for better paying publications in other genres.

    And the lack of a byline might be advantageous. If you are a literary wunderkind publishing in all the best non-paying literary journals, you might not want your fellow writers to know you pay the bills writing confessions, just as I don’t reveal the titles and bylines of all the pseudonymous sex letters I wrote early in my career.

How to Write Confessions

    For detailed information about how to write confessions, read “Writing and Selling Confessions” and “Sin, Suffer, Cash the Checks”. Though both articles are a little outdated– especially submission information– the nuts-and-bolts details remain the same.

    For True Confessions and True Story writer’s guidelines, and for other information about the publisher, visit True Renditions, LLC.

    Oh, and never tell your grandmother that confessions are fiction. You’ll break her heart.

Tales From the Dark Side

by Michael Bracken



NOTE: I'm pleased today to welcome my friend and 2016 Golden Derringer Award recipient Michael Bracken as a guest blogger. Although Michael has written several books, he is better known as the author of more than 1200 short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Crime Square, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Espionage Magazine, Fifty Shades of Grey Fedora, Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and many other anthologies and periodicals. He has received two Derringer Awards, was nominated for a third, and has earned several awards for advertising copywriting. Stories from anthologies he edited have been short-listed for the Anthony, Derringer, Edgar, and Shamus awards. He lives, writes, and edits in Texas. Learn more at www.CrimeFictionWriter.com and CrimeFictionWriter.blogspot.com. As always, it's great to have you here, Michael! -- John Floyd

I don't discuss editing near as often as I discuss writing, but my editing career stretches back almost as far as my writing career. My first published writing was a poem in my junior high school's literary magazine when I was in the 9th grade. My editing career began two years later with a science fiction fanzine my best friend and I started when we were high school juniors. I then edited my high school newspaper as a senior, continued editing and publishing my fanzine for several years post-high school, and later edited several company and organization newsletters.

For many years now I have been editor of a weekly newsletter, managing editor of a bi-monthly consumer magazine, and an editor for a monthly tabloid newspaper. Additionally, I have edited eight crime fiction anthologies (five published and three cancelled prior to publication) and one essay collection.

Editing Knights, the fanzine Joe Walter and I started in 11th grade, brought my first contact with professional writers. I published regular columns by Grant Carrington, Charles L. Grant, and Thomas F. Monteleone, and work by Robert Bloch, Algis Budrys, David Gerrold, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and many other writers who were then, or later became, widely published science fiction, fastasy, and horror authors. These are the writers--especially Grant, Charlie, and Tom--who taught me by example what it meant to be a professional writer.

I have tried, as a writer, to live up to the standards of professionalism these writers exemplified. As an editor, I wish other writers did the same.

Though I don't have any sordid tales of debauchery to share from the dark side of the editor's desk, I do find that too many writers and would-be writers stumble over fundamental aspects of professionalism. Following are a few examples of how:

Plagiarism. In a word: Don't. Several years ago, a regular contributor to one of the publications I edit submitted an article that included a quotation from a famous play. As part of my editing responsibilities, I searched for the proper attribution (author, play, act, scene, line) and discovered instead that the quote was but a small part of a significant portion of the article that had been lifted verbatim from another source. When confronted about this apparent plagiarism, the writer provided many excuses for the grievous failing. Though I sometimes see that writer's byline in other publications, that writer no longer contributes to the publication I edit, nor will that writer ever contribute to any other publication I may edit in the future.

Failing to withdraw work accepted elsewhere. Within the past year, I prepared an article for publication, all the way from initial editing through page layout. While in the process of determining how best to illustrate the article, I learned it had been published in a non-paying online publication a few days earlier. The article was removed from my publication's production schedule and replaced with another. Not only did this writer lose income, but it is unlikely the publication for which I edit will ever again consider this writer's work.

Failing to incude contact information. Writers frequently fail to provide complete contact information (name, address, phone number, and email address) on their manuscripts. During the production process, email attachments often get separated from submission emails, so that, even if this information is provided in the body of the original email, I have a difficult time tracking it down several months after submission when the work is slated for publication.

Worse, though, is what happened recently. An article made it all the way through to publication. When it came time to pay the writer, we discovered that the only contact information we had on hand--after searching through a year's worth of emails--was the writer's email address, and the writer has not responded to any emails we've sent requesting a mailing address. For this failing, the writer might never be paid.

Submitting sloppy manuscripts. Though I rail against sloppy manuscripts as often as possible, this transgression is irritating rather than career threatening.

I edit far more non-fiction than fiction, so I work with many contributors who are not writers. They are, instead, professionals for whom writing is a secondary task. I have worked with manuscripts prepared using a variety of fonts, a variety of font sizes, a variety of paragraph indents (or no indents at all), and which violate every "rule" of proper manuscript preparation (see this link.)

Part of my job as an editor is to reformat all of these mss. before they are put into the production pipeline. To avoid irritating your editors, consider following these manuscript guidelines:

1. Put your name, address, phone number, and email address on the manuscript itself.

2. Number pages using Word's Header/Footer command.

3. Be consistent. For example: However you indent your paragraphs, indent every paragraph the same way. However many spaces you put between sentences, put the same number of spaces between all sentences. However you indicate an em-dash, indicate an em-dash the same way every time. And so on.

In the end, remember that editors are striving to produce publications that attract readers, and you are striving to produce work for editors that will do just that. So, treat your editors and your work with a high level of professionalism. If you do, you should avoid ever providing the examples someone like me uses to frighten new writers.

Market First, Write Second

by Michael Bracken

NOTE: I am sincerely pleased to welcome my friend and two-time Derringer Award-winning writer Michael Bracken as a guest blogger. Even though he is the author of several books--including All White Girls, PSI Cops, and Tequila Sunrise--Michael is better known as the author of more than 1,000 short stories, including crime fiction published in Big Pulp, Blue Murder, Crime Factory, Crime Square, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Espionage, Flesh & Blood: Guilty as Sin, High Octane Heroes, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 4, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Muscle Men, Needle, Out of the Gutter, and many other anthologies and magazines. Additionally, he has edited five crime fiction anthologies, including the three-volume Fedora series. Learn more about him at www.CrimeFictionWriter.com and CrimeFictionWriter.blogspot.com. (Readers, I'll be back in two weeks.) — John Floyd

Though the ability to self-publish through Kindle and other platforms is changing publishing, most beginning and mid-career short story writers who desire conventional publication are quite familiar with the write-submit-write-submit process of writing a story, sending it to the best paying/most prestigious market and then, if the story is rejected, sending it to the next best paying/next most prestigious market and working down a list of markets until the story is accepted or no markets remain.

When writers take a write-first, market-second approach to publication--this is the approach touted by most advice-givers and how I began my writing career--they are following a time-tested path to publication. Over the course of a long-term career, though, a highly prolific short story writer may have multiple opportunities to flip that process on its head so that they take a market-first, write-second approach. I know I have.

I'm in my mid-50s and have been writing professionally since I was a teenager. I am the author of more than 1,000 short stories and have had one or more short stories published each month for 124 consecutive months as I write this. Almost every short story I write gets published and these days I rarely write short fiction on speculation.

Following are some of the ways a short story writer can follow a market-first, write-second approach to publication.

Writing to Order

This happens when an editor provides an outline, a word count, and a deadline, and it results in a guaranteed sale. Some editors build their publications from the inside out, preferring not to rely on the randomness of slush pile submissions to provide all of their publication's necessary content. Instead, they work with a handpicked group of writers to provide all or a significant portion of their publication's content.

I thought this practice died with the pulps but I discovered this practice was still alive and well in the early 2000s when I became one of those writers.

I have been writing women's fiction for most of my career, breaking into one magazine after another through slush pile submissions. The editor of one magazine returned some of my slush pile submissions with extensive revision instructions, which I followed, and then published the revised versions. Once I understood what she wanted, she began publishing my slush pile submissions without requesting revisions.

One day I received an email from her wherein she provided a one-paragraph description of a story she wanted, provided a deadline, and asked if I could write the story. I could and I did.

For the next few months I received one story assignment each month. Then one Friday evening I received an email from the editor telling me that another writer had missed her deadline and asking if I could write the story previously assigned to that writer. And could I have it in her hands first thing Monday morning?

Even though I had never written a 5,000-word story in two days I told her I could. Then I did. From then until the magazine ceased publication I wrote two or three stories to order each month, or roughly 25% of that magazine's entire content.

Lesson: Before you ever have the opportunity to write fiction to order you must establish yourself as a reliable contributor who understands an editor's needs and can deliver short stories consistently and on deadline.

Writing to Invitation

This is when an editor provides a theme, a word count range, and a deadline, and it nearly always results in a sale.

Many anthologies are filled by invitation only and there are multiple ways one can be included among the invitees. The first and most obvious is to be a best-selling author whose name on the cover will move books. For the rest of us, becoming a frequent anthology invitee involves a combination of professionalism, persistence, formal and informal networking, and luck.

Invited contributors who are not cover-worthy may have established themselves as writers who produce publishable fiction to deadline with a minimum of fuss. Often an invitation comes as a result of a previous working relationship or a pre-existing professional or social relationship, but invitations can sometimes seem to come out of the blue.

Several years ago I sold two short stories to the editor of a men's magazine based in California. When the editor left that position he moved to Germany, and one day I received an email from him inviting me to contribute to an anthology he was putting together for a German publisher. I have now written stories for three of his invitation-only anthologies and have been invited to contribute to two more.

Beginning in 2007 I sold a few stories to the editor of several open-call anthologies. When he grew tired of dealing with unprofessional writers and wading through slush piles filled with unpublishable material, he switched to invitation-only projects. I was one of the writers he invited, and between his open-call and invitation-only projects I've places stories in nine of his anthologies.

As an active member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society, an organization whose members communicate primarily through a Yahoo group, I often enter discussions there about writing, editing, and publishing short mystery fiction. Through contacts I've made on that list I've been invited to contribute to at least three fiction anthologies and one non-fiction anthology.

I have also received unexpected invitations. I once received an invitation from a well-known editor of horror anthologies with whom I had never worked and learned later that a contributor to Fedora, the first anthology I edited, recommended me. I placed stories in two of that editor's invitation-only anthologies. Recently I was invited to contribute to an anthology by a writer whose work has appeared in several of the same anthologies as my stories.

"Getting Out of the Box," my Derringer Award-winning short story published in Crime Square, was written at the invitation of Robert J. Randisi, a writer/editor with whom I have crossed paths many times through the Private Eye Writers of America and the Short Mystery Fiction Society.

Lesson: Publishing is a small world. What you do today will impact your career for many years to come. Your professionalism, specifically when dealing with editors and more generally when dealing with writers, who might someday become editors, will be remembered and rewarded.

Writing to semi-invitation

This is when an editor provides a theme, a word count range, and a deadline well in advance of posting an open call, and this can often result in a sale.

For a variety of reasons, some editors continue to post open calls to their anthologies, but a few of these editors give their regular contributors an advance heads-up.

Writing to semi-invitation is similar to writing for a repeat market (see below), but with the knowledge that the editor is actively seeking a submission from you. However, for whatever reason, the editor doesn't want to commit to purchasing your work sight-unseen. It may be that you haven't quite nailed that editor's tastes or it may be that the editor is hoping to find short story gold in the slush pile and wants the freedom to bump a pretty good story from one of the semi-invited for a brilliant story discovered in the slush pile.

This is a transition stage for a short story writer. Receiving a semi-invitation is an indication that you have impressed an editor with previous submissions but you haven't quite nailed this editor's needs or tastes. Before writing a new story in response to a semi-invitation, review previous acceptances and rejections from this editor. Try to determine the strengths of the accepted stories and the weaknesses of the rejected stories before you begin.

I've placed at least 20 short stories with three different editors who do this, and nearly every story I wrote for those editors that didn't make the cut has been placed elsewhere.

Lesson: Receiving your first semi-invitation may be a sign that you are improving your skills as a market-first, write-second writer but haven't quite made the transition. Realize, though, that some editors prefer to edit open-call anthologies and the best relationship you will ever develop with them is to become one of the writers with whom they share anthology calls well in advance of opening up their slush pile.

Writing for a repeat market

This involves contributing new work to an editor or to a publication that's already published several of your stories and the editor has indicated she's open to more. This regularly results in a sale.

The editor never requests specific submissions from you, but implicitly (by continuing to publish your stories) or explicitly (by mentioning a desire to see additional work) encourages you to continue submitting. Your submissions probably bypass the slush pile because you have demonstrated an ability to produce market-appropriate stories on a regular basis. Unfortunately, you cannot assume that any specific submission will result in a sale either because you haven't truly mastered the market's needs or because it is a prestigious market that draws submissions from hundreds or even thousands of potential contributors, some of whom are better known, more talented, and harder working than you are. That you have cracked this market more than once is a testament to your ability and determination.

For each of the past 37 consecutive months I have placed one to four short stories with the editor of a pair of women's magazines who has never requested a submission from me. Her primary method of communication is emailing me contracts and, unfortunately, the occasional rejection.

Writing regularly for repeat markets can lead to write-to-order opportunities and to submission invitations, but repeat markets are equally likely to disappear. I've had many long-term repeat markets dry up after an editor was replaced or the magazine changed editorial direction, but I've also had sales increase when new editors looked to existing contributors to fill their needs. And, more than once I've sold stories to the new editor that the previous editor rejected.

Lesson: There is a well-known business belief that it is far easier to keep a current client than it is to gain a new client. The same thinking applies to writing for repeat markets because it is often easier to write and place a new story with a repeat market than it is to write and place a new story with a new market.

Writing to specifications

This involves writing a story specifically to fit the requirements of an open-call anthology or to fit the requirements of a specific magazine.

Writing to specifications is where you begin the transition from a write-first, market-second career to a market-first, write-second career. You may have grown tired of putting your stories on the slush pile merry-go-round and have realized that inspiration is fickle. One day you see an open call for submissions to an anthology that intrigues you or you wonder why you just can't place a story with a magazine to which you've submitted a substantial number of short stories.

You carefully examine the anthology's call for submissions or the magazine's guidelines. Then you find anthologies the editor has previously produced or you gather a substantial number of the magazine's back issues and you study them. You're looking for commonalities among the published stories that may or may not be mentioned in the official guidelines.

Commonalities may be obvious. For example, every story published in True Confessions is narrated in first person, and Woman's World has a strict word-count requirement. Some commonalities may not be obvious and will require a great deal of effort to determine. The commonalities may be in the writing (lush vs. lean) or it may be the gender of the protagonists (mostly male or mostly female) or it may be the overall tenor of the stories (upbeat vs. downbeat).

Once you complete your market study, you write a new story, incorporating as many of the commonalities you discovered as you possibly can.

Writers who don't work like this sometimes view this extensive prewriting market research as the equivalent of painting a picture by using a paint-by-the-numbers kit. It isn't. This market research is the equivalent of studying a project carefully so you know which tools to pull from your literary tool chest in order to successfully complete your writing project. And for some of us, a short story isn't successfully completed until it's published.

Lesson: This may be the best method for breaking into a new market or placing a story with a new editor. Do this often enough and soon you will be writing for repeat markets, and editors of open-call anthologies will give you advance notice of new projects. If you establish your ability to provide finished short story manuscripts on time and on theme, and your interaction with editors remains professional at all times, you may have the opportunity to contribute to an invitation-only anthology or even have the opportunity to write short fiction to order.

Additional thoughts

Becoming a market-first, write-second writer isn't appropriate for every short story writer. The advantages are sometimes counterbalanced by disadvantages.

Nearly every short story I write gets published, but the majority of my work appears in publications out of the mainstream. For example, over the years my crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Espionage, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, and a handful of anthologies from top publishers, but far more of my crime fiction has appeared in men's magazines. These days much of my crime fiction appears in anthologies--such as the recently published High Octane Heroes (Cleis Press)--which did not mention mystery or crime fiction anywhere in the call for submissions.

Frequent publication in multiple genres has not translated into reader recognition. Several editors who recognize and appreciate my work keep me busy at the keyboard, and a handful of prolific short story writers recognize my name because we often write for the same publications. At the same time, the likelihood of being recognized at a science fiction or mystery convention is slim, and it can be frustrating to have published more short fiction than the combined output of all the other writers on a panel and yet be the least recognized person on the stage.

Shifting sands

Publishing is changing rapidly and everything I know about it may be obsolete before the year ends. I have self-published some short fiction (primarily reprints) for Kindle and other e-readers, but my writing career is still heavily dependent on conventional publication. Despite all the changes in publishing, the market-first, write-second approach to conventional publication allows me to continue a multi-decade string of short-fiction success.

I know there are many more paths to publication than there were when I began but no matter which path you follow, success begins with good storytelling, good writing, market knowledge, professionalism, and persistence.

Trust me. If it took actual talent to become a successful short story writer, I'd still be chasing publication.