This Monday, my short story “Ink” was published in Crab Fat Literary Magazine.  You can check it out here.  This was the capstone to a very productive period of writing for me.

In August, I was enjoying a period of lots of free time for writing.  However, I was also swiftly approaching a new semester of teaching.  Realizing that my available free time for creating was about to come to an end, I changed focus.  Instead of chipping away at larger long-term projects I turned my energy toward completing a number of short stories.  Meanwhile, I also started scouring small press literary journals and literary magazines that were accepting submissions.  I sent out a handful of stories to a variety of publications and several of them were accepted.  Over the last three months I have had three stories published in online journals.  A flash fiction story “Light” was accepted by Haunted Waters Press for their Penny Fiction contest.  Find out more here.  My story “Stray” appeared in Animal: a Beast of a Literary Magazine.  You can check it out here.

An exciting follow up to “Stray” being published is that the good folks at Animal have nominated the story for a Pushcart Prize.  With the enormous volume of terrific work published by small presses every year, I have no illusions about my odds of winning.  However, it is an enormous honor to be nominated.

I still have a couple stories out there under consideration, and who knows when or if they will find the right journal, but nevertheless, I am feeling pretty excited about these recent successes and am eager for my upcoming Christmas break, when I will again have a little free time for writing.