The Flame Tree Provides

According to legend, there’s a tree somewhere in London that’s perpetually on fire. And despite my general fondness for vegetation, I’d rather not extinguish this particular blaze. Mostly because I don’t want to risk ruining a good thing.

See, Flame Tree Publishing has bought more of my stories than any other publisher. Maybe that’s because they like my ideas. Maybe they just appreciate my voice. Or maybe they’re printing out my stories to use as fuel for the ongoing fire, because they’re operating under a centuries-old curse and will suffer horrible consequences if the tree stops burning. Whatever the case, they’ve been really great to me, and have recently continued with their unending generosity by buying more of my work.

“Snakes and Stones, We’ll Break Their Bones” will appear in Flame Tree’s Medusa anthology. This is one of the first books (along with Odin) in their newest series: “Myths, Gods and Immortals.” If you’ve always wanted to read a cyberpunk/Frankensteinian/screw-the-patriarchy story about everyone’s favorite snake-haired lady, then you are in luck. Look for Medusa in October 2024!

Of course, Flame Tree’s giving doesn’t stop there. They’ve also picked up one of my stories for their Moon Falling Short Stories anthology–another book in their positively gorgeous Gothic Fantasy series. My contribution is a short piece (just a little over two pages), called “Rising Tides, Waning Love.”

Thanks, Flame Tree, for publishing so many of my stories. I hope you never stop burning. (Assuming that’s, y’know–what you want. I have no idea how arboreal arson works.)

In other news, my humor story “A Rat, a Root, and a Big Orange Fruit” is now available in Feisty Felines and Other Fantastical Familiars–just in time for Halloween! (It’s a Halloween story. About a rat. The whole thing is so ridiculous it’s basically a cartoon, which makes it one of the best humor stories I’ve had published.) You may want to consider checking this one out, especially if you’re looking for a new October tradition to supplement your annual re-reading of the Roger Zelazny classic A Night in the Lonesome October. (My all-time favorite book!)

-Z

I Come Bearing News! And Also Ice Cream.

Okay, I confess: the ice cream was only for me. But I had to find some way to get the customer through the door, and now that you’re here, you’ve got to read the entire post. Don’t look at me–I don’t make the rules. (Despite the fact that my name is, very clearly, in the URL. Don’t think too much about it.)

While I may not have ice cream for you (and even if I did, it wouldn’t stay frozen very long on this 75-degree website), I do have the news I promised. It comes in the form of several story sales since my last post.

“The Graveyard Cart” appeared in Flame Tree Publishing’s monthly newsletter, in February of 2023. The theme for the issue was “Graveyard Lovers,” so naturally I wrote a story about a shopping cart. (Trust me, it makes sense. So long as you’re romantically attracted to squeaky and uneven wheels, anyway.)

This is actually one of my favorite horror stories I’ve written, so I’m glad Flame Tree gave it a chance. The newsletter is an email-only affair, but if they should ever put “The Graveyard Cart” on their website some day, I’ll be sure to link it here.

And, of course, the generosity of Flame Tree didn’t end there: they also published “The Tower Calls” in their Lost Atlantis Short Stories anthology. It’s a romantic fantasy-adventure about a sentient skyscraper that somehow learned how to operate a phone. It uses this newfound power to make crank calls and generally annoy the rest of the city’s skyline.

. . . Okay, that’s not what the story’s actually about. But it really is a romantic fantasy-adventure, and at the time I wrote it, it meant more to me than any story I’d ever written before. Some of that significance has since worn off a bit, but I’m still very glad I preserved this period of my life in story form.

In September, Factor Four Magazine published my flash fiction piece “But it Was Not Rain.” If I had to describe the story in one word, I’d say “wet.” (In that way, it’s sort of like melted ice cream. Looks like you’re getting what you came for after all!)

You can read the story here.

Lastly, I recently sold a story called “A Rat, a Root, and a Big Orange Fruit” to Feisty Felines and Other Fantastical Familiars. It’s one of my favorite humor stories to date, largely because I just started typing and let my brain do whatever it wanted. Normally that results in a court order and/or temporary expulsion from the local Pizza Hut, but this time it worked out great!

And that’s all for now. Happy Holidays, friends!

-Z

The Noodlemuse Strikes Again (For the First Time)

I suppose I should open with my standard apology for taking so long to update this site. But really, at this point, my silence is the norm; it’s not exactly worth commenting on. (Also, if I’m being honest, I’m just not in the mood to apologize right now. And for that, I’m sorry.)

With that out of the way, let’s get to some updates. I’ve actually been writing more over the past few months, because I appear to have found my muse. In a bowl of noodles.

(Is it a metaphor? Are we talking about an actual noodle? Has this guy finally lost it and decided he’s some sort of Spaghetti Whisperer? These are all valid questions. Unfortunately, I won’t be answering them. You’ll just have to live with this macaroni mystery and accept that you’ll never fully know why I started writing again. But my recent bout of motivation is definitely noodular in origin.)

Before I get into the benefits reaped during the Great Noodlization of 2022, I should talk about the story I finished just before that pivotal moment in my Ramen Rebirth. See, several years ago I got a very inspiring rejection letter from then-editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, C.C. Finlay. Charlie had frequently mentioned he liked my cover letters (which were written with the intent of both earning a laugh and ensuring I couldn’t be mistaken for a professional), and asked me to send him a humor story some day. Naturally, my inability to work under pressure kicked in, and I spent the next three and a half years in a blood-feud with a Word document I absolutely hated.

Charlie ended up retiring from his post before I could finish his story, but when the submission window for Unidentified Funny Objects 9 came around, I decided it was time to put my nose to the grindstone. And, once I realized how bad the grindstone smelled, I pulled my face away and got to work on the story.

The result was a piece called “A Crisis of Fate,” which editor Alex Shvartsman was kind enough to buy for his excellent anthology series of humorous SF/F. It’s probably the most “Zach” story I’ve ever written, so if you ever want to know why I’m the way I am, this is the thing to read.

UFO9 came out in November of 2022, and I’m pleased to announce that “A Crisis of Fate” was one of the volume’s four stories to make the Tangent Online 2022 Recommended Reading List. (And with a star by its name, to boot!) I haven’t made the list in years, probably because I haven’t been writing much since the last time I got there (in 2017, with two entries). Of course, now that I’ve had a run-in with a very inspiring noodle, the odds of making the list in the future have increased lexponentially.

Granted, I haven’t yet sold anything that I’ve written in this post-pasta era, but I also haven’t taken many swings yet. A few things are currently on submission; a few more need to be fixed up a bit before they go out again. But all in all, I’m pretty pleased with what I’m producing, which is a rare sensation for me. (This must be what it feels like when a starfleet engineer finally designs a spaceship that doesn’t explode, or an orc forges a sword that’s not pointy on both ends.)

As far as other publications go, I’ve also sold a reprint of my Christmas flash piece “When Friends Come to Call” to Holiday Leftovers. That story hasn’t been available for a long while now, so I’m glad to see it out in the world again.

Lastly, I sold something to an anthology called Merciless Mermaids: Tails From the Deep, which should be available sometime in 2023. My contribution is called “Apex Predators,” and it’s a drabble: a story of exactly 100 words. This is my first-ever drabble sale, which makes me extra proud of it–it feels like I’ve earned a new merit badge. (And I’ll put it right next to my “dribble” merit badge, which I earned for trying to chug a Big Gulp right after having dental surgery.)

And that’s it for today’s updates. If the Noodlemuse keeps doing its work, I’ll hopefully have reason to visit here more often.

Thanks for reading, friends–as always.

-Z

I’m Alive! I Swear.

Despite what the lack of recent posts may indicate, I am, in fact, alive. I was definitely not slain in battle with a necromancer and subsequently reanimated to offer you this reassurance, all in the hopes of gaining your trust so that my master might infiltrate your society and spread his dark agenda. Anyone who would make such slanderous accusations is an obvious traitor and/or library-talker.

Even though it’s been a while, this post is going to be rather short–and it’s not because I have decaying, corpselike fingers that make typing difficult. Rather, it’s because I had a new story published today, and in the event that anyone clicks the link in my author bio, I don’t want them to come here and find the website equivalent of a dilapidated barn.

The story in question is “For Love, I Tear,” a flash-fiction piece which I wrote in January of 2018. It’s finally found a loving home at Metastellar, and you can check it out here.

I’ve also had another story published since my last post, which I would have mentioned if I hadn’t been so busy with perfectly normal mortal affairs that were entirely unrelated to the ancient Bone Scrolls of Kaz’gatahr. It’s a horror piece called “The Sand Knows,” which was inspired by a camping trip to Washington state’s Cape Disappointment. (An obvious misnomer, as anyone who’s visited the park will tell you.) You can find the story in the Cemetery Gates anthology Places We Fear to Tread.

And that’s about it, for updates. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to consume my daily vitality draft from its silver chalice, so that I might command the legions of my dark lord with the strength of a thousand men. (Vitamins are important!)

-Z

P.S. Now that I’ve finished this post and started digging through the ruins of this clearly neglected site, I’ve realized there are a few other announcements I missed during my totally normal and in-no-way-related-to-the-amassing-of-an-undead-army absence. Here’s what you may have missed:

  1. In October of 2019 I won my local library’s inaugural “Terrifying Tales” short-story contest, with a flash SF/horror piece called “To the Brim, Old Dark.” It’s currently not available anywhere, unless you happen to be a KCLS librarian who swiped the display copies off the shelf after Halloween.
  2. “The Woman With the Long Black Hair,” which originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, has been reprinted at Frozen Wavelets. This is especially significant to today’s post, because I’ve always thought of “For Love, I Tear” as a sort of spiritual successor to “The Woman With the Long Black Hair.” Check out the latter here!
  3. “The Final Chapter of Marathon Mandy,” originally published in The Binge-Watching Cure, has been reprinted in one of Flame Tree Publishing’s gorgeous Gothic Fantasy volumes: A Dying Planet.

Another Year, Another Post

Yes, it’s been almost a year.  And yes, I continue to be bad at updating this site.  In my defense, though, no one could have known the Glor’thok Invasion would be so time consuming.  My soot-smeared war-spatula tells tales of post-apocalyptic battle:  each jagged nick, a memory of foes vanquished; each black stain, a reminder that I can’t cook an omelette.

In the interests of expedience, I won’t spend this post giving very long descriptions of my accomplishments over the past year.  Instead, I’ll provide a brief list of my publications, punctuated by interesting facts about the Glor’thok Wars.

  1.  “Three Ways to Leave Hawaii” was published in Unidentified Funny Objects 7 in September of 2018.  To celebrate my fifth appearance in the UFO anthology series (and my first appearance as a name on the cover!), the Glor’thok used their pigeon-mounted ray-guns to evaporate the entire Columbia River and blame it on Oregon, infuriating Washingtonians along the border.  The Civil War of the Pacific Northwest was short-lived and, truth be told, actually rather friendly.Image result for unidentified funny objects 7
  2. I sold a reprint to Tell-Tale Press’s The Starship Logs, Volume 1: Winter Holidays anthology.  “When Friends Come to Call” originally appeared in Kazka Press’s At Year’s End anthology, which is no longer available; I’m glad readers now have another chance to read it, either for free in their browsers or for a buck on Kindle.  (The Glor’thok prefer the Kindle version, because they like to support new publishers when they’re not busy eroding our natural monuments with air-dropped acid-baths.)
  3. “The Great Indoors” has appeared in Flame Tree Publishing’s Haunted House Short Stories anthology.  This marks not only my fourth appearance in one of Flame Tree’s objectively gorgeous Gothic Fantasy volumes, but also my first sale of a straight-up horror story.  (The closest I’d come previously was with “Sweet Dreams, Glycerine,” in Flame Tree’s Science Fiction Short Stories–though that was more like dark SF.)  Oh, and while we’re on the subject of horror stories, does anyone remember when the Glor’thok destroyed huge chunks of our brains with skull-burrowing space-ticks?  Of course you don’t.Image result for flame tree publishing haunted house short stories
  4. “No Silver Lining,” my first story to ever appear in a physical book, has been reborn in the (digital) pages of another Tell-Tale Press anthology:  The Spell Books, Volume 2:  Creatures.  As with “When Friends Come to Call,” this one can be found on both the Tell-Tale Press website and in a Kindle e-book.  Alternatively, you could read my story within the muted red darkness of the Glor’thok Slaughterhalls (where they keep all their books), but good luck getting past the guards without an unreasonably large supply of hummus. 

 

And that’s it for today.  See you all next year, after we’ve been bound in shackles and forced to witness a traditional Glor’thokkian coronation ceremony.  (Don’t forget your towel!)

-Z

The Things I’m Bad At (Still)

Yes, I’m still alive.  And yes, I’m still really, really bad at updating this site.

Truthfully, I haven’t done a whole lot of writing in the past year or so (I’ve been devoting much more time to my two favorite hobbies:  procrastinating and not writing), but despite that, I do still have a few announcements to make.

First, let’s start with recent* publications.

  1.  “Tessa and the Troll,” a flash-fiction story I originally wrote for a Codex Writers’ Group contest, has been published in Galaxy’s Edge #28.
  2. “Tyler the Snot Elemental Scours the Newspaper, Searching for Change” has been published in Unidentified Funny Objects 6making for my fourth appearance in the UFO anthology series.Cover art
  3. “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Ash” has been published in Flame Tree Publishing’s positively gorgeous Endless Apocalypse anthology.
    4. “The Final Chapter of Marathon Mandy” has been published in The Binge-Watching Cure, an anthology of stories that grow progressively longer as the book goes on, to ease audiences into the habit of reading.  (And, ideally, cure them of their binge-watching afflictions.)  As an interesting side-note, “Marathon Mandy” is my all-time most rejected story, garnering 23 rejections before it finally found the right editor.binge watching cure front cover LOW-RES for webAnd now, some other news:

“The Black Clover Equation” has been translated by Marcheto, who operates the Spanish fiction-translation blog Cuentos Para Algernon.  Five of Marcheto’s translations have been nominated for the Ignotus Award (which she tells me is, essentially, the Spanish version of the Hugo–quite possibly the highest honor in science fiction), and I was thrilled that she wanted to translate my story when she has an entire world of SF/F to choose from.

Followers of this site (imaginary though you may be) might recall that “The Black Clover Equation” is a story I wrote in 2012, submitted once, and forgot about for the next 4-5 years, thinking it wasn’t very good.  With that in mind, let’s look at all the things that have happened with my “not very good” story since its publication in Flash Fiction Online about a year and a half ago:

  • It’s been translated into Spanish for a successful SF/F fiction blog.
  • It was, apparently, discussed at a Nebula Conference panel on flash fiction.  (Believe me, no one was more surprised–and thrilled–than I was to learn about this news.)
  • It made the Tangent Online 2017 recommended reading list, with a 2-star rating–the highest rating I’ve ever received from Tangent.  (And, on that note, “The Woman With the Long Black Hair,” from the May/June 2017 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, made the list as well, albeit without any bonus stars.)
  • It was used to teach a course on short fiction at a university in Waxahachie, Texas.  (The instructor contacted and interviewed me, and shared the story with her class.)

Not bad, for a story I’d relegated to the depths of my trunk.  Kind of makes me wonder what other treasures might be buried in there, under the piles and piles of failed fiction experiments . . .

Anyway, the last announcement I have to make is a new story sale:  “Three Ways to Leave Hawaii” will appear in Alex Shvartsman’s Unidentified Funny Objects 7.  This is the longest story I’ve ever sold at a professional pay-rate–it’ll be about 20 pages in the book, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

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And . . . I think that’s it.  It’s entirely possible I’ve forgotten to list something significant that happened in the past year, but if I do come up with any such news, I’ll be sure to announce it in my next post, slated for a December 2027 release.

-Z

*Relatively speaking, of course.

The Things I’m Bad At

There are a lot of things I’m bad at.  I can’t roller-skate, I swim like a cinder block, and there are at least three perfectly normal activities I’m not allowed to engage in without fire-department supervision.  Of course, there are also a few things I’m good at, but they aren’t worth mentioning because fitting an entire pancake into your mouth is not a marketable skill.

One of the things I’m positively terrible at, though, is keeping this site updated.  Which is why there’s a good chance no one knows about any of the following:

  1.  “The Woman With the Long Black Hair” was published in Fantasy & Science Fiction.  You can get the issue online or at Barnes & Noble, though the latter will probably only be displaying it for a few more weeks at the most.  
  2. After nearly five years of being stuck in editorial quicksand, “The Horror at Hatchet Point” has finally clawed its way to the surface and been published in the Lovecraftian fairy-tale anthology Twice Upon an Apocalypse.
  3. I recently sold to Unidentified Funny Objects 6 a story titled “Tyler the Snot Elemental Scours the Newspaper, Searching For Change.”  It’s about exactly what you think it’s about.

(Special thanks to UFO editor Alex Shvartsman for helping turn my hideous rough draft into something publishable.  Without your guidance, the world would never know what struggles a snot elemental faces in its daily life.)

And that’s it for now.  See you all at the next update!

-Z

Happy April Fools’ Day

I’m by no means a prankster (unless you count the time I tried to convince a stranger I had diplomatic immunity to local laws, which seemed like a great idea until she asked for my license and registration), so I’m not going to pull your leg with some false news here.  After all, I have no idea what your medical history is like; your leg might come clean off, and then I’d be stuck with some horror-film version of the “Major Award” from A Christmas Story.

So instead of tempting fate with a good-natured lie, I’m going to give you some real news:  two pieces of it, in fact, because today is a holiday, and this is how we’re going to celebrate.

Firstly, I recently sold a story to The Binge-Watching Cure, an anthology designed to relieve people of their Netflix addictions by getting them to read again.  “The Final Chapter of Marathon Mandy” (which I wrote way back in September of 2012) should be published sometime later this year.

Secondly, let’s talk about “The Black Clover Equation.”  This is another one I wrote in 2012 (August, in this case), and it only ever made the submission-rounds at a few markets before I forgot about it, leaving it to decompose in my trunk of cringe-inducing unsold fiction.  But something made me dig it up in 2015, and after just barely failing to sell it to Unidentified Funny Objects 4 (possibly because I sold editor Alex Shvartsman a different story:  “Champions of Breakfast”), I promptly got distracted by something and let my weird little tale of good and bad luck sink to the bottom of my trunk once more.

This brings us to late last year, when I got word that Flash Fiction Online was itchin’ for some humor stories.  FFO was the site of my first-ever fiction sale (professional or otherwise), so I dug up “The Black Clover Equation” and sent it on its way.

Now, about five years after that first publication, I’ve returned to FFO.  “The Black Clover Equation” went up today, and you can read it here.

Part of me feels like I should celebrate the occasion with a wild and crazy party.  After all, today’s a holiday, and if the neighbors complain about the noise, it’s okay–I’ve got diplomatic immunity.

-Z

EDIT:  Because I’m an idiot (or maybe just because I’m bad at updating my site–but more likely both), I’ve forgotten until now to mention that “The Final Chapter of Marathon Mandy” is not my first sale of the year:  I’ve also sold a piece of flash fiction called “Tessa and the Troll” to Galaxy’s Edge.  This will be my second publication in Galaxy’s Edge (the first being “Tomorrow’s Forecast,” from issue #20), and I can’t wait to see this lighthearted humor tale appear in the pages of Mike Resnick’s magazine.

Never Self-Reject!

One of the things authors tell each other (and sometimes have to remind themselves) is to never self-reject.  If you’re not sure an editor will like your story just because they typically don’t buy much Martian weasel-farming fiction, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give it a shot.  Maybe some aspect of your writing will override the editor’s usual preferences.  Maybe all the time your weasel-farming story spends on Venus will be enough to break free of the Martian cliche.  But if you self-reject by never submitting the story in the first place, you’ll never know.

With that in mind, I didn’t think I had anything to send to Flame Tree Publishing’s Swords & Steam anthology.  After all, the closest I’ve ever come to writing a steampunk story was burning myself on the hot air rising from a box of microwaved pot stickers and yelling something that only sort-of sounds like “punk.”

But the submission guidelines did say they’d be looking for (among other things) historical fiction, so I figured–what the heck?  Let’s see if they’re interested in reading a little about Eli Whitney.

Let me tell ya–I’m sure glad I sent that email.

“Eli Whitney and the Cotton Djinn,” which originally appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show #42, will now see print in one of Flame Tree’s positively gorgeous anthologies.  Last year I sold “Sweet Dreams, Glycerine” to their Science Fiction Stories anthology, and that book remains the prettiest thing on my shelf; I can’t wait to see Swords & Steam standing alongside it.

In other news, remember that post I wrote about Codex’s Weekend Warrior competition?  (If not, it’s right here.)  Well, as it turns out, I’ve sold another of my contest stories–this time, to a place called Fantasy & Science Fiction.

. . .

Yes, I’m talking about the same F&SF that’s been around since the 1940s.  The same F&SF that published things like Roger Zelazny’s “The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth” and “A Rose for Ecclesiastes.”  The same F&SF that I’ve long said is the short-fiction market I most wanted to sell a story to.

So, that’s a thing.  “The Woman With the Long Black Hair” will appear in the pages of F&SF sometime in the near(ish) future.  It’s a flash fiction story about 800 words in length, which is particularly crazy because F&SF only publishes a small handful of flash stories per year.  Really, I had no reason to believe they’d be interested in something so short.

And that’s why you never self-reject.

-Z

Happy Halloween!

Okay, so it’s a little early for Halloween.  (And a little late for Summerween.)  But you’re reading a post by a guy who gets the Christmas itch sometime around Lughnasadh, so let’s not worry too much about temporally displaced holidays.

The reason I’m wishing you all a happy Halloween is because I recently wrote a story about the holiday, and–in a rare fit of competence–also managed to sell it.  “The Fantastic Tale of Miss Arney’s Doubloon” will appear in the 2017 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, coming soon to a Kickstarter near you.

Evan Dicken (a contributor to the 2016 YEAG) was the one who pointed out the anthology’s submission call to me, and he deserves credit for this sale:  his critique vastly improved my story.

If you’re wondering what the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide is, it’s a book of short science fiction stories aimed at 9-12-year-olds.  If you’re wondering what it looks like, this should give you a pretty good idea.2017 YEAG Cover

I’m not sure the book will be out in time for Halloween 2016, but don’t worry:  you can read my story at any time of year.  After all, calendars are just guidelines, not regulations.

Merry Christmas!

-Z