me and my little stories 2023
by the way, have i ever told you about me at all
i will probably be sending out the year-end round-up of story recs in a few days but if you will indulge me in one last bit of self-promo this year…
For all that 2023 has, in many ways, sucked ass on a global scale, I must confess it has not gone so bad for me on the specific micro level of this weird hobby that is writing short fiction and attempting to get it published somewhere
I’ve had eight (8) stories accepted for publication this year. Compared to many of my colleagues this is kids’ stuff, rookie numbers, but consider: this year’s total of 8 stories is twice as many stories as I’ve gotten out there in the previous 8 years combined, so idk, seems like a big deal for me
Anyway, here’s an overview of my 2023 and a preview of 2024:
1. “Wraith, Nonetheless” (Body Fluids)
Published in August on the Body Fluids newsletter and now archived in its forever home on their website, this story about a magical(?) peeping tom somewhere in the American South was rejected nearly 40 times prior to its ultimate publication in Body Fluids, and it remains to this day the only story I’ve ever written that’s received feedback from an editor saying it was, and I quote, “problematic”, which i dont know, kind of makes me smile
2. “With the Virion” (Café Irreal)
Also in August, this flash piece inspired by/conceived during an especially feverish bout of Scarlet Fever which, as I’ve said before, is a very 19th-century disease to be suffering in the year of our lord 2023, seems to me. Café Irreal is a long-running publication which I recommend everyone to take a look at, in fact I also recommended a bunch of stories from their archives, if you need help deciding where to start
3. “I Piss Up Your Throat and Out Your Mouth” (Mouthfeel Fiction)
In the November Short Story Rex, I made reference a recent renaissance of new and new-ish short fiction venues specializing in (to borrow a taxonomy proposed by @heksenhaus.bsky.social in an old thread on the ‘bad site’) “the ugly: an unsettlement of the human, through an essential transformation or deviance of the body and/or psyche”.
For example, the debut issue of Mouthfeel Fiction, in which my goofy little flash piece—a scant 600 words riddled with exclamation points and written entirely in the phoniest Italian eye dialect you ever did see—serves as kind of a palate-cleanser to wash the taste and feel of all that gore and agony and loathing out of your mouth.
As for the other 5 stories I’ve placed, here are the titles and where you can expect to see them some time between now and March 2024:
“Manywhere, Manyone, Manything” in Seize the Press
“Some Reflections on the Abstruse Campaign” in Propagule
“Dorcas” in Short Fiction
“Hank Eltz, the Singer” in God’s Cruel Joke
“The Ice Pick That is Made of Ice” in JAKE
So that’s already almost twice as many as this year. I have a lot more stories I’m excited to share with readers, hopefully some day I will find editors who are equally excited to share those ones too
till then, have an excellent new year
thanks for reading
~NMW