Paper Fruit

It’s official! It’s official and I can announce it! I’m going to be published! Me! In a book! Seriously!

My short story “In Sheep’s Clothing”  is going to be published in Running with the Pack, an urban fantasy werewolf anthology edited by Ekaterina Sedia, published by Prime. Sedia is an amazing writer and editor, her Paper Cities just won the World Fantasy award for Best Anthology, in case you hadn’t heard. I am completely honored to be included in her latest effort. It should be coming out in May sometime, or thereabouts, so. . . I’m not asking you to go out and pre-order it, but if you wanted to, you could pre-order it! Also on the table of contents: the esteemed Mr. Jesse Bullington with his Tallahassee-based “Blamed for Trying to Live,” and a host of other amazing, talented writers. I’ll be less vague about the Table of Contents later, when it’s officially released. At any rate, it will be awesome, it’s actually mostly a reprint anthology, but there is some new stuff in there, including my story!

This is my first sale. Ways I plan on celebrating: definitely champagne, probably a tattoo. Of, you know, a werewolf. Arrroooo! This is awesome.

I’ve heard back from everyone and thus I am happy to announce the winners of the Paper Fruit Bloggiversary Flash Fiction Contest!

S.J. Chambers earned herself an Honorable Mention with her tale “How a Blog Was Born,” a tale of a girl and her (I guess) spirit guide. Longtime readers will likely get a kick out of it. S.J.’s story will be published on Monday, January 11th.

Drew Rhys White‘s “Beth/slash/Nathan” grabbed the runner-up spot, earning himself a signed copy of the The Sad Tale of the Brothers Grossbart. His story is slotted to go up on Tuesday, January 12th.

First place was snatched by one J. T. Glover with his stellar entry, “Waning Moon.” For his efforts J.T. will get to kick back with some Philip K. Dick, courtesy of Prime Books. Check back to find it up on Wednesday the 13th!

So here is the thing: anyone who stumbles across this, please tweet/FB/blog/email your friends. I’d love for the winners to get some well-deserved attention for their stories, which rule. I am super-stoked to be able to publish them on my blog, and you should be super-stoked to read them!

Wowza: my friends, blog-readers, and friends/blog-readers can fucking write. Not the most erudite way of putting that, but it is a sentiment as blunt as it is true.

I had nine entries for the contest, eight of which were considered, and after much deliberation we have a winner and a runner-up! I will reiterate this with the official post/publication of the winners (and after I send out all the congratulations/sincerely difficult rejections), but the gap between first and second place was so tiny as to be statistically negligent– I had to read both several times to determine whose story reigned supreme. It was also pretty tough to pull those two out of the pack as they were all very, very good. I wish I could publish them all but seriously, all the authors involved should consider submitting their work to flash-fiction markets because they were quality. I actually hesitate to publish the winners on my blog because I have no idea if that would make them “reprints” if the authors in question wanted to do anything with them later. . . but I am selfish and the stories are awesome so up they go once everything is said and done.

Thanks to everyone who participated! Expect some great fiction on this blog soon.