Clearing out some submissions

I’ve had a number of rejections in the last month or so, and my ‘to submit’ pile has grown accordingly. Fortunately I have a to-do system that excels at continuously nagging me until I give in and clear anything outstanding (except, it appears, to actually write something).

Therefore I’ve dedicated an entire evening to submitting:

Waterwall to Clarkesworld Magazine (who, it must be said, has an awesome on-line submission system)
Dead Angels to Reflection’s Edge
Forever Morning to Cutting Block Press
Toby See The Stars to The Fifth Wednesday Journal

I wish, I really wish somebody invented a standard document format with which all submissions could be based on*. Each of the above subs required modifications for each publication. Finding the right magazine is easy. Getting the format right is the time-killer.

* yes, one exists, but it isn’t adhered to.

More text from Stand-off

It’s coming on well. Ideas are proving themselves less recaltricant than normal.

Some more snippets here:
–
…there had been a touch and go moment when a few undeads had somehow made their way up through the thick forestry, heading upwards, driven by some unknown bearing, but they had become stuck in the overgrowth and even now mewled aimlessly only 20 yards from the outstation and Boone, their sightless eyes fixed on some point behind him, unaware of his existence, only driven by some internal wiring defining their existence as a goal somewhere up the side of this mountain. Boone imagines that with a clear path the two undeads – a black man in a torn orange jump-suit and a massive grey haired afro teamed in an unlikely pairing with an old Chinese woman, her face like an angry, blood-rinsed walnut – would walk straight past him and continue up the mountain, down the other side and head right into the ocean without a single conscious thought running through their heads.

Slight roadblock

After a few days of near perfect running I’ve hit my first roadblock on Stand-Off.

I have been using an 8 page hand-written synopsis, writing almost verbatim from my – surprisingly excellent – notes and have come across the first part where in my infinite wisdom I had decided, when initially writing this outline, to skip some ‘small parts’(1) in the story. Whilst I can (and hopefully should) be able to overcome the gaps it’s still a stumble after nearly three thousand words of remarkably smooth prose.

I’ve also found myself recently aware of what is known in the media business as ‘zombie fatigue’. Ten years ago Zombie and Undead movies were very few and far between, and it wasn’t until the ‘Dead reboots and – more recently – 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later(2), Shaun Of The Dead, and numerous Romero remakes that a certain ennui has developed amongst the public in all matters undead. This translates into popular media, which explains why we won’t be seeing zombie movies for a while (Romero notwithstanding – the man is a full-on-zombie-making-machine).

So – this means that selling this story once written may prove somewhat of a mission. Considering how many vampire and werewolf stories are published in the small press every year, regardless of the fact that most are a) utter rubbish and b) more or less identical along a few basic deviations, I’m hoping a well written story which just happens to be about those pesky undead folks still has a home in the literary world.

Guaranteeing it’s a well written story is the hard part, naturally.

1) – where ‘small parts’ means ‘fundamental issues conveniently swept under the carpet during conception’
2) and now is not the time to debate the definition of a zombie, as both the 28 movies are not zombie movies – in the eyes of the professional un-dead discerner that is. Nor, it has to be said, are there zombies in this current story of mine. They are however, undead. It’s complicated.