The cover for Penumbra's February 2013 zombie issue

My story "Midnight Visitors" will be released February 1st, 2013 in the Penumbra zombie themed issue. I'd mentioned this before, but the cover image was finally released since then:

Guest blogging at Penumbra eMag

Hey readers, few and all. In case you hadn't already read it elsewhere, my guest blog has been posted to Penumbra eMag. It's called "Philosophy and Fiction." Enjoy.

Speaking of Penumbra, I saw the cover for the next issue which contains my story "Midnight Visitors" and it looks pretty cool. When I get the go ahead I'm going to post a copy of it here.

Writing Update

I have exactly 22 stories ready or almost ready for submitting. Of those 22:

19 - are already in the marketplace
02 - are waiting for good markets to open
01 - is almost finished

Of those 19 submissions in the marketplace:
13 - are at pro markets
06 - are at semi-pro markets
01 - was previously sold and is at an audio-only market
01 - is in the second round of consideration

Between my last posted submission stats and now, I had dropped down to around 4 submissions out at once. It took a lot of energy, and writing a few new stories, to get my stats back up--especially since I trunked a few and sold some others. Kind of proud of myself.

Space & Time Magazine

I just got my contract from Space & Time and sent it back out to them. After the week their website was down, I was beginning to fear they'd folded without a sign. Glad to know that's not true. I also learned from the contract that I can expect my issue to drop sometime between now and 2015. No joke! Not that I'm complaining. The moment I get that fresh printed copy in my little hands, all the months or years of waiting will feel like seconds. Granted, it'll feel like something between 1 and 64,281,600 seconds, but still!

Penumbra Part 2 - Zombies

I'm not a huge fan of prompts and themes, but Penumbra's February zombie themed issue was too tempting to pass up. Like (probably far too) many people, I'm a zombie fan. I've loved that sub-genre of horror ever since I first saw Night of the Living Dead on TV when I was eight, and the love was cemented around ten when I found a two-pack of Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead on VHS. Since then I've seen several dozen zombie flicks (mostly on DVD, most of them terrible), read a few zombie tales (novels and short stories), dressed up as a zombie twice (for good reasons, not just for the hell of it), and participated in a zombie walk at Monroeville Mall where the original Dawn of the Dead was filmed. In other words, I was well versed on the lore and felt I could make a contribution to the genre.

However, the prompt was to give Penumbra something different, not just the standard trope of shuffling corpses brought back from the dead by magic or radiation or a virus. So I probed the darkest recesses of my soul (which is apparently somewhere in my frontal lobe) and found something surprising. It was definitely different than what I'd seen and read before, but how original it happens to be will be left for the reader to decide. In any case, I submitted it.

Fast forward ten whole days to yesterday when I got my response email from Penumbra. As any writer knows, ten days in the writing world is too short for good news. The most you could expect was a rejection, or a bump up to a higher round of consideration. When I opened it, I was hesitant, preparing myself for the worst. However, it was an acceptance! Celebration and alerting my family and friends commenced, followed by a signed contract. There were apparently 600 fiction submissions to this theme, and only around five were purchased. I'm happy to be a part of that select group.

Look for the issue to drop sometime in February at Penumbra Emag!