Coyote Wild!

Coyote Wild is a brand spanking new paying market for short fiction. That means you write fiction for their nifty ezine, and they give you coinage of the realm. Actual flatted circles of gold.

Coyote Wild's premier issue launches in two weeks. I'll be ranting about this again soon. Meantime, they're accepting submissions, and their next reading period rolls around again in March. Take a look at their submission guidelines.

When asked about the ideal story for Coyote Wild, Submission Editor Lori Basiewicz had this to say: "Our ideal story is one that is well-written, but still has a hard time finding a home elsewhere, either due to the subject matter, length, or because it's genre is difficult to classify."

Finally, a home for my series of flash fiction and novellas following Tina, the midget giant. I, for one, cannot wait to see the first issue.

Over and Out.

Shopping and Fixing

I have, if the Doms out there will pardon the term, submitted "At My Window" to Five Minute Fantasies.

"At My Window" is a solo piece and falls squarely into the Dark Erotica genre. I have my eye on another prospective buyer the moment FMF's rejection rolls in. Or after a few weeks go by and FMF hasn't emailed me back, whichever is the case. Rejected e-mail submissions... er, dominations don't tend to receive replies.

I am also cleaning up "Love Thy Neighbor," and shall be mailing it, unsolicited and in all of its gooey glory, to Penthouse Variations.

Just as soon as Sable and I work out a cover letter. "Love Thy Neighbor" is more erotica, though decidely less dark. I wanted to add a few demonic sacrifices, but Sable said no.

von Klick and the Date That Lived!

Hole Encrusted Carps, Albuquerque, New Mexico, just got slathered in eleven inches of snow! Ecological imbalance, anyone?

Anyway, yesterday was amazing. An ex-girlfriend of mine, Adele, went out with coffee for me. We sang together in the car--she's an opera singer and has an amazing voice--and then just sat in a café and talked. And talked. And talked. We spent a good four hours using up the building's O² and engaging the occasional stranger in conversational acts of randomness. Bliss!

Then we hooked up again a bit later and had some Mexican food at an amazing little bistro down the street from my house. The Spanish language is beautiful, but no where near as enchanting as Adele's eyes.

If only time would trickle slow, like rain that melts the fallen snow...

I didn’t realize how much I missed this girl until I saw those eyes. They're wild and haunting, and they hide a chill sort of intellect.

"Here's looking at you, kid." Maybe I won't screw things up this time.

All in All, I'm Just Grumpy This Morning

The Erotic Journal put up my and Sable's story, "Love Thy Neighbor." I'm probably picking at nits, here, but I wonder why the blog coloured her name bold yellow and mine slender white. Is the Erotic Journal trying to tell me I need a tan? It makes me think they took the idea of Sable having a co-writer whilst kicking and letting forth proverbial shrieks.

This writing for recognition business sits ill with me.

The blog very kindly removed all formatting so that thought in the first person now appears to be error in tense. Ah, interweb, I love you so. Reading our work (plastered between those beautiful naked women), I realized exactly how much we writers actually need an editor. We went through that story three times each and still didn't catch all of the errors. I'll fix it up better before attempting to shop it

And now a word on sexism.

Black Lace, a small press that only accepts female authors, is within their every right to discriminate against males. Males need discriminated against. Sexism, after all, only applies to men. Black Lace isn't being sexist, they're enriching themselves and fortifying their place in the publishing world.

BARF.

As someone on Absolute Write pointed out, writers, much like journalists, are professional liars. We can write across the gender gap and we can do it damn well. But if Black Lace and other such rags feel they need to so severely limit the stories they'll buy, I shall gratefully avoid them and proceed to the next buyer.

If one type of discrimination is bad, they all are. It's a buyers market. Black Lace can buy whatever they please. But when they blatantly say "Males need not apply," they are every bit as bigoted as a white discriminating against a black, an Italian discriminating against an Asian, and a man discriminating against a woman.

Legal or not, they're still behaving like sexist pigs.

I've taken on my first co-author project. Sable and I are working on a some por nenas literature, where I'm functioning as an editor and she's doing the blunt of the dirty, words-to-paper grind. It's a very time efficient project for me, but so far we have a very smooth relationship. I'm hoping we'll be able to make it into a profitable venture. Sable has been publishing her erotic fiction to The Erotic Journal -- Don't you dare click on that link unless you're over 18 or live outside of the continental U.S. She's got a great imagination, and that's what really matters in this business.

While our erotic fiction will, I believe, be appearing in The Erotic Journal, I'm going to do my damndest to actually sell the stuff. Her long range goal with this is to make an anthology of short stories--mine is to make some quick scratch and get us both a record we can run with. I'm hoping that The Erotic Journal doesn't turn out to be a big mistake on my part. Cross your collective fingers for me, and, please, go enjoy Sable's work and leave her some feedback.

On a more selfish note, I've finished the outline for a new, novel length work in progress. I won't say any more here, but I am absolutely in love with the concept. I promise not to babble about this again until I'm ready to shop it around.

I'm still struggling to find an ending to another of my short stories. It's called "The Swan," and it’s a piece of dark fantasy based on an old English ballad from the 15^th century. Other people have written interpretations of the ballad before, but mine has a dark twist that I'm proud to say, is really creepy. I might have to do some hard-core editing to keep it from being Adult's Only, though.

A friend of mine from Absolute Write, Shweta, has been helping me a lot with the concept of this. The story will, of course, be dedicated to her. She's a damn good author. Expect to see me plugging her work a lot.

Shweta's "Dragon Hide" is, perhaps, one of the coolest undiscovered short stories out there.

Miss Snark, I anxiously await my butt-ripping.

With any luck at all, Miss Snark will give me her opinion on my hook for Starboard Aft (or whatever the hell I'm calling it this week.) I'm crossing my fingers; I was lucky to get into the Crapometer at all.

Edit:

She hit mine and blew right past. I'm a bit dissapointed; I was hoping for insight of some sort, or at least a good chuckle. C'est la vie.

Dare I Delve?

A good friend of mine convinced me to write an erotic short story. My mind is twisting and labyrinthine, so I agreed. The horrific result of combining smut with my darker side resulted in At My Window, a 2,800 word deviation. I've started shopping it around just today.

To my profound disgust, I discovered there are several publishers out there that only publish female authors. I'll be damned if I don't do something about this. I support equal rights for women. Not equaler rights for women, or slightly-less equal rights. Equal. As in, exactly the same as mine. As far as I know, there are not Male Only publications out there--at least not in the US of A.

More on this as I educate myself.