News

Always A Groomsman, Never A Groom

The results are in for the 3rd Annual Micro Award, and my story "Phantom Energy" -- which originally appeared in Wigleaf -- was a finalist. Last year I was nominated for my story "Between the Keys," which appeared in elimae. From what I'm told, no other author has ever received a second Micro Award nomination ... though, this being the third year, I'm sure that will change quickly, but as they say, it's just nice to be nominated. It's good to see online friends Ravi Mangla and Erin Fitzgerald nominated as well for their stories, both which appeared in PANK (read Ravi's story here and Erin's story here -- you need to scroll down to the last one). Actually, speaking of PANK, it along with decomP had two stories each that were nominated. Both great publications that you should of course be reading regularly.

The winner of this year's Micro Award was “The Children’s Factory” by Michael Stewart that appeared in issue 2 of Birkensnake. You can read that story here, and view all the nominees here.

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Tights, A Cape, And Flying, Do Not A Superhero Make

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My story "Superman's Dead" is up today at Monkeybicycle. It is another one of my stories written in the second person. I think it will eventually come to the point that all I write are stories in the second person.

Fun fact: I like to think my titles are usually pretty clever (or at least decent), but the original title for the story was the title of this blog post. Yeah, pretty bad, right? I can't believe I even subbed the story like that. But then one night I put in an old CD and -- bam! -- I knew what the new title had to be. So thanks to Our Lady Peace, and to Jessa Marsh and Steven Seighman for taking a chance on the story.

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Ending The Year On A High Note

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Back in April, Cooper Renner was kind enough to publish what is probably my strangest piece of flash (okay, hint fiction) called "The Amazing Adventures of © and ®." At the time, I had joked about doing a sequel. I'd had no intentions. The story was what it was and that was that. But then, as some stories do, the characters refused to die ... or, at least in this case, die quite yet.

The sequel is called "The Killer Inside ©" and is now live at Wigleaf. Major thanks to Scott Garson for taking a chance on this story.

(Also, how obvious is it I stole those story titles from two novels?)

Tomorrow will be my last post of the year, doing the cliched end-of-year thang. See you then.