M.M. Schreier's Blog, page 5

Publication Alert: “Curios” TL;DR Press

TL;DR Press runs a really fun annual contest called the 1K Word Herd. Each participant receives individual prompts and has 48 hours to create a 1000-word piece of flash fiction. In addition to cash prizes, they publish a book featuring the top entries. I’ve been lucky enough to be published in the past three ebooks. (See my Contests & Award page for links.)

This year, I was given the prompts “postman” and “an Eldritch god.” I’m not sure if they realized those prompts were right up my alley, but I ended up writing a story about a mad goddess which took first place! It’s probably one of my favorite things I”ve written this year, so hope that you will take a look.

If reading my little mad goddess story isn’t enough draw for you, this year’s book, “Curios“, will benefit the fantastic organization: Trans Lifeline. Trans Lifeline is a trans run, gassroots, non-profit that offers direct emotional and finacial support to trans people in crisis. I couldn’t be more proud that my work will help benefit this amazing group. The book is extremely inexpensive – if you can spare the $2.99, you can help make a difference in thrans people’s lives. And read some amazing fiction as well!

Contests: Writers’ Playground

I’ve been doing Writers’ Playground’s short story contest for a couple years now. I really enjoy the contest for two reasons. One–it’s genre agnostic. Many contests assign genres as part of their prompts, but WP is open, meaning you can write in any genre you like–from litfit to horror to scifi to romance–with no preference from the judges. Secondly, the prompts are choose-your-own-adventure.

You are given a small pool of characters and settings, and you must choose one of each to feature in your story. There is also an object that must appear–this one is the same for everyone. It’s a prompted contest that allows for flexibility, which is pretty unique.

In addition, every submission gets personalized, detailed feedback, so even if you don’t place, you get your money’s worth.

Last year, I placed 3rd in the Third Playground Challenge with a little speculative romance called “Waiting in the Everafter.”

This year, I chose a waterfall as my setting and a veteran as my character. Every story must include a scroll. I ended up in 10th place with my story “Barberry for Atonement.” The General in this story is a war-weary witch with a unique gift. I kind of love her. Hope you do too!

If you get a chance, also take a look at my friend Charlie Roger‘s story – “Men and Other Disappearances” which took 9th place. We’ve been writing buddies for a number of years now, and I love seeing his work out in the world!

Limited Time Only!

While I’ve already announced the release of the issue, for the next month only — 6/21 – 7/20 — you can read my short story, “Hunger,” free at All World’s Wayfarer. This is a piece of literary fantasy (~1800 words) utilizing the point of view of a pair of magical creatures.

If you enjoy the story, consider buying the full issue at Amazon and supporting a really great speculative fiction lit mag. For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you’ll get 13 beautiful stories that will stay with you a hell of a lot longer than the caffeine high.

This Summer Solstice issue is described as filled with incredible secrets and impossible choices. I mean, how can you go wrong? Join me, alongside authors like Rowan Rook, one of the amazing founders of All Worlds Wayfarer and Kevin M. Casin, the EIC at Tree and Stone Magazine. You won’t regret it!

Hubris & Humility

Today is a bit of a landmark for me, as it represents the anniversary of my very first published piece of writing: “Uninvited House Guest” at the Ponder Review. (Incidentally, it is my only piece of creative non-fiction as well, but that’s a whole other story.)

Six years ago today, I had my first opportunity to hold in my hot little hands, my very own words in print. I can’t pretend that it didn’t feel pretty amazing. There’s a special kind of magic when something that started out as a collection of thoughts and feelings in your brain is turned something cohesive that you can touch and feel and share.

Reading the story today, I can see I’ve come a long way in six years. Some of the writing is pretty cringe, trite, cliché. But it was heartfelt and honest, and the best I knew at the time. It did set some unrealistic expectations though. This was the first story I ever submitted, and it was accepted on the first try. And suddenly, there I was, a puffed up baby writer thinking I was going to take on the world.

The next story I submitted, a little piece of drama/flash fiction, I quite boldly sent to The New Yorker with all the confidence of a “seasoned” author with one whole credit (at a non-paying, collegiate lit mag) to my name.

The hubris.

As you can expect, the world came crashing down in the form of a impersonally worded form rejection. I was crushed and didn’t submit anywhere another two years.

The journey continued. I learned that rejection is a huge part of publishing. I got better as a writer. I tempered my expectations. I made better submission decisions. I bear rejection better. Ext., etc., etc. To this day, I continue to learn, and treat each acceptance with humility and deep gratitude. However, I might not have kept with it, without that first taste of success. So, even though–compared to my current standards–the story isn’t that good, I’m still grateful.

I humbly present “Uninvited House Guest.” (p70)

Be gentle, but feel free to laugh with me as you read it. Everyone starts somewhere, and I truly believe remembering our roots reminds us both to be humble, and proud of how far we’ve come!

Publication Alert: All Worlds Wayfarer

You can now pre-order All Worlds Wayfarer Issue XV at Amazon!

Hunger by MM Schreier
“Each afternoon, the child slips into the wood and waits at the berry bush. Each afternoon, the wyvern sail in from the treetops, drawn by the nectarous scent of her emotions.”

I really loved writing this story written from a pair of wyvern’s point of view. It was an interesting exercise on perspective and what a magical creature might understand about the human world–joys and pitfalls alike.

I’m always delighted to publish with the good folks at AWW, as they put together beautiful books and magazines. While the story will be free to read on their website for a limited time later in June, pre-order your copy today in order to get immediate access on 6/14/23 to all the amazing stories in this volume!

Writing Battle Flash Fiction Results

So, I won a thing. In fact, it’s the second time I’ve won this particular thing.

Writing Battle is a fun and unique contest where the contestants are also judges! What’s that you say? The contestants are also judges? Indeed they are. By signing up, you agree to blind read a number of duels as part of the judging process. You get a series of two anonymous stories to read, give feedback on, and ultimately choose which you choose as the “winner” of the duel. Each dueling pair gets a small group of judges, and the one with the most “wins” moves on. (You only read in genres that you were not assigned, so you are never judging anyone in direct competition with yourself.)

In the very end, when there are only two stories left standing, the ultimate winner is chosen by a a small group of industry professionals.

It’s definitely a lot of fun!

I was assigned “Lost World” as my genre, and took the genre concept a little out of the box. It’s where I do my best work. If you are interested, take a peek at the winning story here. There’s also an interview with yours truly as well!

Hope you enjoy!

2022 by the Numbers

I’ve been a little frustrated recently with this whole writing thing. Too many rejections. Weird feedback. Not feeling that I’ve grown enough or have been as “successful” as I think I should be. My own unrealistic expectations often make it easy for Imposter Syndrome to raise its ugly head. So, I decided to take a look back at the year and see exactly what I did, by the numbers.

PUBLICATIONS

In 2022, I made 108 109 submissions (I squeezed another one in there!) and published 13 new stories. That’s about a 12% acceptance ratio, which is lower than I have had the past couple of years, but I suppose I should be happy with double digits. These stories represent a range of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, as well as two pieces that could be contemporary fiction or speculative fiction, depending on how you read them.

Stories released in 2022:

“A Price Already Paid” The Lorelei Signal
“As Long As There’s One” Musings of the Muses a Brigids Gate Press anthology
“A Taste of Online Dating” MetaStellar
“Resistance” Prismatic Dreams an All World’s Wayfarer anthology
“A Mathematical Betrayal” Wyldblood
“To Teach Myself to Fly” Mosaic a TL;DR Press anthology
“Darla and the Clown” The Fourth Corona Book of Horror Stories
“Sanctuary” and “To Call an Ancient Echo” 72 Hours of Insanity v11 a Writers Workout Writers Games anthology
“Knock, Knock” and “when the ice moon rises, and the night is strangely bright” Intrepidus Ink
“A Spell to Say Goodbye” The Quarter(ly) vol IV: ENDS

CONTESTS

If you know me, you know that I’m a contest junkie. I tend to use them as a way to get new stories written, as I am definitely deadline motivated. Over the course of the year, I participated in 15 writing contests (I may be missing one or two), many of which had multiple rounds, resulting in 28 distinct stories ranging from 250-word micros to short stories up to 5,000 words in length. Of those, 15 of them placed, and a couple of the contests are still “results pending.”

Notable:

Writing Battle Flash Fiction – February 2022
First Place: “Antique Photos” (story and interview)

The Third Writers’ Playground Challenge – March 2022
Third Place: “Waiting in the Everafter”

YeahWrite SuperChallenge #26 – December 2022
First Place: “The Things I’ll Do for Bacon”

AWARDS

I was very pleased to be nominated for 2 awards this year.

One of my favorite monster stories – “It Tastes of Salt and Terror” – was nominated for The Dark Sire magazine’s annual Creatives Award. You can read a little about it here, but the story itself is currently unpublished.

Probably the highlight of 2022 was my nomination for a Pushcart Prize for “when the ice moon rises, and the night is strangely bright.” This little eight-paragraph, run-on sentence, break the rules piece is close to my heart, and am humbled by the amount of love it has received.

MONEY

No, I’m not going to tell you how much money I made from writing in 2022. I’m not in it to make a living, as my dog has grown accustomed to a certain type of lifestyle that my career in robotics affords him.

However, I will say, that I made enough money to fund a nice beach vacation, and that’s pretty good. I do feel pretty strongly that it is important to pay creatives for their work so I rarely pursue non-paying venues. I also realize that the fiscal and time resources to run a magazine are daunting, but even a token payment to authors is appreciated. It’s been a tough year for the world of publishing at large, and it’s been heartbreaking to see some really amazing pro-rate genre publications like Daily Science Fiction and The Arcanist closing their doors.

OVERALL & LOOKING FORWARD

Overall, it wasn’t a bad year. It wasn’t my best, but combining it with a big move and a million other things, it shaped up better than I originally thought.

For 2023, I’m going to try and be a little more thoughtful about how I spend my writing time. I have some bigger projects that keep getting sidelined during the flurry of contest-mania. Keeping a writing-specific calendar will hopefully help me manage my free time more deliberately. I love contests, the thrill of squeezing something out by a deadline, but in 2022 there were a number of weekends with multiple contests going on. It became a cycle of crazed productivity in a short period, followed by a long crash of nothingness, trying to recover and balance the rest of my life in between the chaos. For 2023, I’d like to avoid those severe swings and see how that serves me.

Fingers crossed that 2023 is filled with light and hope and creativity!

Publication Alert: The Quarter(ly)

I’m excited to announce that you can now pre-order The Quarter(ly) – Vol. IV: ENDS. This is a two-volume issue filled with art, comics, poetry, and prose that is expected for January delivery.

“This theme of ENDS deals with grief and loss in all of its various shades. While I didn’t intend for it to be so heavy in this direction, it’s what naturally started to emerge; however, in many of these ends, there is a new beginning, one of hope and love.”

Chris Smith

I’m pleased that my little speculative flash piece – “A Spell to Say Goodbye” – is included in volume two. This is a quiet piece that is not only about grief and saying goodbye, but about the peace of closure. I hope you enjoy it!

Pushcart Nomination

Oh frabjous day, I’m super excited to announce that I’ve been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. If you live under a rock and do not know what that is, The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is the most honored literary project in America – including Highest Honors from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Just being nominated is a huge honor and I’m pretty twitterpated.

My lovely friends at Intrepidus Ink nominated my story “when the ice moon rises, and the night is strangely bright.” I’m entirely humbled by the amount of love this eight-paragraph run-on sentence story has generated. It completely validates my need to write stories that are out of the box, while still submersing myself in beautiful language.

Don’t forget to check out Alexandra Grunberg‘s story “From Top Peak to Waterside” that was also nominated by II. Very pleased to be in such good company.

Publication Alert: Intrepidus Ink (story 2)

I have the honor of publishing back-to-back stories at Intrepidus Ink. (See previous post here.)

Today, my story “when the ice moon rises, and the night is strangely bright” is available for your reading pleasure. It’s a short piece of literary fantasy flash, a little under 700 words, and presented in a non-traditional format. You can read a short interview about the story and my process there as well.

This piece is probably my favorite thing that I’ve published thus far in 2022. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Many thanks to the great folks at Intrepidus Ink for amplifying my voice and being champions of out-of-the-box, fearless writing.