Sold my first Short Story

So,

I've been hacking away at this writing thing, seriously, for a couple of years now. Before that, I was trying to call myself a writer, but the commitment, for whatever reasons, was not there. It's just easier to sit down and read a book or surf the net or watch a movie than it is to sit down and write. That's really what it comes down to.

But the last couple of years have been productive, even if most of that is hidden on my flash drive.

But January 2010 should see both my first professional comic writing credit and my first published short story go live. I've written about the comic story, "Life is Funny," which will debut around the middle of January on Ape Entertainment's online anthology site. But the short story has only been hinted at on Facebook.

About a year ago, I sat down in Borders to find out about this "Joe Hill" guy. (Yeah, the Joe Hill who had the best-selling horror novel, in paperback I believe, last year - Heart-Shaped Box). I pulled down a copy of 20th Century Ghosts read the introduction and decided to check out the short story "Abraham's Boys" based upon the Van Helsing character from Dracula.

It was an amazing story, and I was impressed with how items in the beginning the seem tangential, as if they were only window dressing for the setting, come back in the end to be integral parts of the tale. And something in my brain clicked, and I felt like I understood how to use this structure to create a story that would be far more lasting than the other pieces I'd written. And there, in the Borders cafe, I started to map out my tale.

From this, came "A Stone Wall Between Us," which is set in the early 1900s and tells the tale of a small farming family wherein the mother has passed and the young son and daughter are raised by their brooding, often misguided, father. I'd rather not say anything else so as not to give the ultimate narrative of the story away.

So, I had this story. It was in a horror vein, though not as overt as "Abrahama's Boys," which, itself, was a more tangential horror story than one normally associates with the genre. What to do with it?

Now, the funny thing about the UFO anthology at Ape, is that many of the creators that have stories in it, are ones I've met online over the past few years, all writers and artists looking to "break in" to the business. Some of these I profiled when I was writing my weekly column at the Pulse. And one of these guys, CJ Hurtt, is an editor/contributor for the online horror anthology, Dark Recesses from Cutting Block Press. He told me in an email that he was now the submissions editor for Dark Recesses (which sounded like it might be a rotating position), and if I had anything horror-ish, I should send it along to him, personally. So, I revised Stone Wall, utilizing advice I took away from Stephen King's book, On Writing - and why did I wait so long to read this?

Now, I'd submitted a couple of earlier stories to Dark Recesses, and been rejected. Those stories were, admittedly, not ready for "prime time." Both needed to be better fleshed out, were little more than outlines waiting to be expanded. I had no assurance that this one would get much farther than my previous offerings. But, a few weeks later, I got the reply that, after CJ passed the story along to the Publisher, I had a sale. My first.

I signed, faxed, and then mailed copies, of the contract, and on Christmas day, I received an email with notations from the editor working on Stone Wall with suggestions on how to improve the story. Much of what he noted involved my proclivity to create sentences where two actions read as occurring at the same time, when they were actions that would have to occur in sequence. There were other notations that helped to clarify the prose as well. Most of the notes I worked into the narrative, while the suggestions opened my eyes to a few other places where I could make modifications to better clarify the narrative. and a few of the suggestions I chose not to take, which was fine with the editor.

As with "Life is Funny," the editor made sure I understood that this was my story, and he wanted this to be a dialogue rather than an edict set forth by Dark Recesses. Having this experience with a working editor, I can say I've learned a great lesson with regards to my writing and look forward to applying it to subsequent stories.

I hope, and believe, this is only the beginning. Writing, and getting published, is not only a matter of "who you know," which can be applied to most things, but it also involves being open to suggestions and evolving/learning as a writer. This would not have been possible if I had not been writing regularly for the past few years. Just by doing that, and sharing it with my wife or with others along with what has become evident to me just from the actual writing, I have learned a lot and seen improvement.

I will throw up the link when the story goes live. And hope for more in 2010.

-chris