Update: October 2021

It’s the spookiest month of the year, and that means it’s time for another monthly update!

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First, I finished off my sword & sorcery story at the very end of last month and decided to send it off to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. The next submission period at Whetstone probably won’t roll around for a few more month, so I figured I’d see whether any of the higher paying markets in this subgenre might be interested. HFQ is one of my “white whales”, so I’d be ecstatic if they reply with an acceptance. If not, there are quite a few other fish in the sea. The Swords and Sorceries anthology series and Savage Realms have also caught my eye. We’ll see what the future holds for what I’ve now entitled “Warden of the Wex Wood”!

I’ve also resumed submissions on Folk of Rock and Water, since a couple more novella markets opened up in October. They probably represent my best shot at an acceptance, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up just in case more of the same unfolds.

So far this month, I’ve focused on writing a horror story that serves as a very distant sequel to “Hooves and Tobacco on a Sunday Morning”, my very first published story. Deer Woman is a really interesting figure, and I’m eager to utilize her again. My writing has come so far since those days! Right now, writing itself is going pretty smoothly. If my current pace holds, I should be able to finish it by the end of the month. Hopefully Fifty Shades of Dead likes it, because I’m not sure there’s any other market interested in this kind of story.

Once that’s done, I plan on sending out queries for The Silver Shrike to a small list of agents I gathered last week. Scouting is a little tricky, since there aren’t a ton of agents explicitly looking for a blend of superhero prose and post-apocalyptic fantasy. Still, I’ve found eleven that might be interested. Wish me luck!

When it comes to reading, I finally managed to start Uncompromising Honor and it proved itself to be almost everything I’d hoped for. Weber managed to make the battles compelling despite Manticore’s overwhelming tech advantage over the Solarian League, and there are some really poignant moments. Especially with the ending. My only complaint is that there’s still no resolution when it comes to the Mesan Alignment, which I guess will have to wait until we get the sequel series starring Honor’s children.

Otherwise, I’ve been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard. I picked up The Bloody Crown of Conan on sale and read “The Hour of the Dragon” and “A Witch Shall Be Born”, while also returning to The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. It seemed appropriate, given the time of year. Despite its title, “Pigeons from Hell” is easily one of the creepiest horror stories I’ve ever read!

Life could’ve been a lot kinder to us this month, though it also could’ve been much crueler. We got struck by lightning last Sunday, and almost exactly four years to the day from when we got struck the first time! Fortunately, we suffered much less damage than back in 2017. The biggest issue was our water heater, which got zapped, so we didn’t have hot water this week. At least it wasn’t a total loss, as we installed a replacement part and got it working again yesterday morning.

Compared to some of the other people whose homes were struck by lightning last weekend, we got off really easy.

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Here’s hoping everybody has a Happy Halloween! I’ll see you again in November.