Published #2

Last November, The Pedestal magazine was accepting flash fiction submissions in the “slipstream” genre. Being ignorant of said genre, I turned to Google, my trusty search engine. It fetched the following definitions: “the fiction of strangeness” and “the surreal, the not-entirely-real, or the markedly anti-real.” Right up my alley. So I set about writing a story in 1,000 words or less and submitted it to The Pedestal posthaste.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t accepted. But they did say they enjoyed it, and I thought it was worth submitting elsewhere. A month or so passed, and Dark Recesses didn’t accept it either. So I submitted it to Everyday Weirdness. And yesterday, at long last, the editor emailed me with some good news: my story will be published this coming Monday (3/22).

Entitled “Scuttle”, it’s based on a walk my wife and I took to the grocery store last fall when we were confronted by a feverish fellow staggering our way, sweating and blithering. “Write what you know”—we knew serious fear that afternoon. The guy had a bad case of the flu (or some other infectious plague), and he looked dead-set on spreading it. What happened next? You’ll have to read “Scuttle” to find out.

Working with the editor of Everyday Weirdness was an enlightening experience. He sent me a couple revision suggestions (like changing “Michelin Man” to “Marshmallow Man”) and asked that I turn some of the one-line sentences into paragraphs, all of which I did without delay. I wish editors would work with me like this more often; it’s helpful knowing what to fix. I think the final product is better than what I submitted originally, and I’m looking forward to seeing it online when it's published.
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