Timeline of the Submission Process

Breakdown of the fiction submission process:

Day One:
Submit story to publication. Double check 15 times that you have the correct email address.
(If using Submittable, double check that you didn't accidentally withdraw the manuscript.)

Days Two through Fourteen:
Check email every 12 seconds.
Experience outrage that publication does not respond instantly.

Day Fifteen:
Alternately assume rejection while at the same time assuming an acceptance with the same level of enthusiasm as what was shown in Ralphie's "theme" day dream in "A Christmas Story."

Day Sixteen:
Read over submitted manuscript and realize it still has serious structural problems. Secretly hope to be rejected so you can fix said manuscript.

Day Twenty:
Assume manuscript lost in the ether. Consider resubmitting under a different name. Ultimately decide to let it go gentle into that dark night.

Day Twenty Five (or Ninety One, depending on the publisher): Hour One:
Receive rejection email.

Same day: Hour One and one minute:
Experience outrage that someone would reject such brilliance.

Same day: Hour One and six minutes:
Happy dance over the opportunity to revise rejected manuscript

Same day: Hour One and eight minutes:
Experience outrage that someone would reject such brilliance.

Same day: Hour One and ten minutes:
Question your abilities. Confirm confidence in your abilities by reading poorly-written erotica. Have a drink. Start new story.

Same day: Later than night:
Experience outrage that your work isn't on the level you want it to be. Finish new story and start second new story.

Following weeks:
Revise rejected story. Submit revised story. Go back to day one and do it all over again. Repeat process for the rest of your natural life.

I'm in the News!

As part of February's "Women in Horror Month," promotion, my publisher,  Charon Coin Press, is being exceptionally kind and giving me some media mention!

First up,  I have an interview on the main site, where I share my view on what being a women in the horror industry is really like:

http://charoncoinpress.com/2015/02/23/women-in-horror-month-feature-amanda-hard/ 


And I also have a guest editorial article over on HorrorTree,  "Short Kisses and Dark Nights," where I talk about the short form in horror fiction:

http://horrortree.com/wihm-short-kisses-and-dark-nights/

Bram Stoker Awards Short List Announced

So congratulations to everybody who made it to this year's Bram Stoker Awards ballot!

FINAL BALLOT

And a special shout-out and congratulatory high-five to Usman T. Malik, whose story, “The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family” is not only up for a Stoker, but also for a Nebula!  Way to go, Usman!

(One of the advantages of being in the HWA is getting to read authors before they achieve Stephen King-esque popularity. Well, that and all the free books...)

Let Play Books With Friends!

It was a crazy end-of-year here, but 2014 proved remarkably productive. The first fruits of my last year's labors should be hitting the shelves this spring. Here's hoping everyone had a great holiday season, and in case you still have leftover Christmas money, why not give these up and coming releases by my friends and colleagues a try:

A Dark and Winding Road by Matthew Weber
Amazon Link
11 weird, wonderful, and sometimes disgusting tales by my very talented critique partner. Although when he launched this book, he packaged it in a barf bag, the stories aren't splatter-punk gore. This book satisfies my desire for justice to be served. In Weber's world, if you're a jerk, you get what you deserve. I like that world, and I like his work.

Tales of a Goth Librarian II by Kimberly Richardson
Amazon link
A second volume of disturbingly beautiful short stories by the author of The Decembrists. Richardson has an intriguing "literary" style that makes reading her work something like drinking a very fine wine in very expensive crystal. (Although she would prefer absinthe to a cabernet.) I liked the first volume of her work so much I bought copies for Christmas presents. (If you received a copy of that book from me, then THIS is the woman I was telling you about!)

Just in time for Halloween: 22 More Quick Shivers

 

Amazon Link

So Yay!


My flash piece, "RIP ellipses," a 100-word story about an inept necromancer, has made it to print.

Here's the 411 on this project:

22 Quick Shivers from DailyNightmare.com is a different kind of graphic literature. This second annual anthology presents a collection of 22 horror tales, each 100 words in length, that each re-tells a nightmare posted on DailyNightmare.com. The twist is that each story is graphically typeset to enhance the mood and invite the reader to slow down and experience the sensations of a nightmare.

It's a beautiful book, and I'm excited to share a table of contents with some pretty heavy hitters in the horror community.

READ THIS: The Three by Sarah Lotz

 Four simultaneous plane crashes.  

Three child survivors.  

A religious fanatic who insists the three are harbingers of the apocalypse.  

What if he's right?

I’m a sucker for a good epistolary novel, especially when it’s done well, and Sarah Lotz did it very well.

Structured as a book within a book with multiple voices and viewpoints, this collection of “real world documents” details the aftermath of four mysterious plane crashes and the three (or is it four?) children who survive them. Rumors of that fourth survivor fuel a growing religious movement convinced the children are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Absurd, right?

Except the children who survived the ill-fated flights aren't the same children who boarded them.

Despite the creepy-as-hell premise, this book is less about the three survivors and more about the public perception of children lauded at first as miracles, then harassed as harbingers of the world’s end. I won’t bore you with all the characters and storylines because it’s too easy for a review of that sort to lead to spoilers. You can check out the plot synopsis over on her website: I’d prefer to talk about what you, the reader, will get out of your time spent with this book.

If there’s an underlying theme in this novel that stood out to me, it’s one of “searching.” While the rest of the world searches for an explanation--a mechanical or religious reason for the simultaneous crashes—the book’s characters search for their own meanings and their own places in the mysterious post-disaster reality they’re thrown into.  Ultimately the reader is also left to search for his or her own meaning of both “The Three” and the book The Three. I like this kind of indeterminacy. I like open endings. I like books where there are no answers at the end, and where the conclusion isn’t wrapped up neatly with a bow and gift card. I like books that demand a second reading. If you don’t, this is probably not the book for you.

I think of this book as more of a “literary” horror novel, rather than the plot-driven kind of thriller that calls to mind a 90-minute movie.  There’s an eerie “found footage” feel to the book-inside-a-book, and the story itself is fast-paced and engaging. There are some incredibly visual scenes in the beautifully tragic “suicide forest” in Japan, a repeated motif of people unable to speak their own thoughts without going through intermediaries, a wonderful buildup of tension as the family members discover who the returned children turn out to be, the overall mystery of both the nature and existence of the “fourth” child, and an open ending that allows equally for both questions and closure. 

Although this was a summer read for me, it’s exactly the kind of book that these rainy and chilly October evenings demand. Grab a cup of steaming coffee, settle into your favorite chair, arrange the blanket around your legs and enjoy.

Available now from your favorite bookseller.

What's your state? Of Horror, I mean...

Jerry Benns, owner and chief maniac over at Charon Coin Press, has just announced the publication of the first two volumes in their new State of Horror anthologies. The first two of this 50+ volume series, Illinois and New Jersey, are now available pretty much everywhere, and they're A-MAZ-ING.

From their website: The idea behind State of Horror was that each anthology would focus on horror stories from a particular state, making the location the essence of the tale. Since each state has a unique personality, geography, folklore, and culture, the stories contained in each volume of State of Horror, will reflect this distinctive feel. The very state from which the volume is named becomes a character beyond setting, even the basis of a terrifying tale.  Groovy!

Given the political situation lately, I can't imagine a more frightening couple of states than Texas or Arizona, so it's nice to see the horrors of Illinois, my neighboring state, for a change. Jersey has always scared me, especially since that time in Trenton, at the Olive Garden, with the mafia chick I was convinced was going to stab me in the throat. Yeah, we'll talk about that later...

We're headed into October Country, so if you want to welcome Fall with a little bit of freaky, give these books a shot.