Florida’s Emerging Writers, published by Z Publishing House, is now printed and available for purchase. I have a story published in this anthology and, yeah, I’m pretty proud of it. That’s about as shameless as I can get.
You can imagine my delight and gratitude when I read Carrie’s review. You can also imagine how choked up I got when a friend told me over dinner one night that he had read my story three or four times and then proceeded to talk about its meaning, in particular the part where Melissa and her mother June drive over the “railroad tracks, a hump in the road that made Melissa feel that she was going up a roller coaster.” My friend riffed on the idea of trains, how they come and go, the sense of traveling through time, these two women trying to visit a past that had already left the station.
If either Carrie’s review or my friend’s comments peak your interest in this new anthology of Florida’s Emerging Writers, please click here. Any purchase you make using this link will net me a small commission. (And my continuing shameless self-promotion includes peppering my post with the link for purchase.)
Thank you all for your support.
Yes, there is a cat in my office window. Why are you surprised?
In case any new readers come across this post: It’s all good. I’ve received credit for any sales made through this link: http://www.zpublishinghouse.com/?rfsn=1648278.3e0285
Patience is not one of my virtues, but I’m working on it ;)
This post is not about hawking the anthology, however. A couple of wonderful supporters have already indicated that they purchased the anthology using the links I provided yesterday. Their generosity should result in a decent commission for me; yet, those sales have not shown up and I have to wonder if there is something wrong with the URL. (Although what it could it be, who knows? Both I and a friend used the link to purchase the anthology, and those sales have shown up.)
I have a small favor to ask.
If you did click on the link provided in my blog post and purchased the anthology Florida’s Emerging Writers (or any publication on Z Publishing’s website), please email your name and order number to me at marieannbailey[at]gmail[dot]com
With your name and order number, I can follow up with Z Publishing and (hopefully) resolve this issue. I hope this doesn’t seem petty, but if anyone is purchasing the anthology in order to support me, well, it’s only fair that I receive the support.
A few weeks ago, I shared good news with you all. A short short story of mine is going to be published by Z Publishing House in their upcoming anthology, Florida’s Emerging Writers! Woot! The anthology is available for preorder now. If you’re interested, use the following link to go to Z Publishing’s website. Your purchase of any of their publications will net me a commission: http://www.zpublishinghouse.com?rfsn=1648278.3e0285. I’ve just ordered a copy for myself because I like seeing my work in print.
Among other things, I’ve been sick the last several days with a head cold and cough. Through two doctor visits, I’ve managed to amass quite the little medicine cabinet. But the cough lingers, especially at night when I want to sleep. Otherwise, I’m much better. Just sleep-deprived.
But nothing can contain my excitement at having one of my short stories published. A different version of the story was posted a few years ago on another blog. Fortunately I had already deleted the post, in anticipation of shaping up some of my early bits into (hopefully) publishable pieces. No one was more surprised than me when Z Publishing House selected “No More Tomorrows” for the anthology. The short story is a fictionalized account of visiting my childhood home after it was damaged in a flood and then condemned. I read it to my husband after we learned that Z Publishing had accepted it. I got choked up near the end, realizing how much I still feel that loss even though it had been decades since I left my family home.
This experience will also be an kind of intro into self-promotion for me. One where I encourage (and hope) readers will plunk down a bit of $ in order to read a fiction anthology in which I’m included. I’ve had an opportunity to review some of the other stories included and this is definitely a win-win: a win for me if you purchase and a win for you because you’ll get a treasure trove of outstanding short stories to read. Here’s the link again so you don’t have to scroll back up: http://www.zpublishinghouse.com?rfsn=1648278.3e0285
As I’ve said before and I’ll keep saying until I’m blue in the face (or at least start coughing), I couldn’t have gotten to this point without you, my lovely community of readers and writers. Many, many thanks!
I always think of Friday the 13th as a lucky day for me, even if the luck only extends as far as nothing bad happening on that day. This Friday the 13th started off ominously though, putting me in a funk that lasted all the way to bedtime when my luck finally changed.
As I do every morning, I was sitting with a cup of coffee in my favorite corner of our couch, a heated wrap around my neck to ease my cervical arthritis. I had been fairly upbeat the day before, since Thursday is the day before Friday which is the day before the weekend. Those two days a week–Saturday and Sunday–I practically live for. But I digress.
So I’m nestled in the corner, sipping hot coffee, poking around on my iPad as the fog from my brain slowly clears when I sniff and my sinuses contract. I quickly shoo away the first thought that comes to mind. “No, no, no! I do not want to deal with this. Not this early in the morning!” I proceeded to ignore what my nasal passages were practically screaming at me, forcing me to breath deeper as the scent overwhelmed my senses, yet I recoiled at the thought of the obvious.
Finally I took my last sip of coffee, put the mug down, the iPad away and got down on my hands and knees. Granted, I did have to put my nose practically into the thick pile of our area rug, but there was no denying it, no way to ignore it.
Cat pee. Old cat pee. I looked up at Maxine, innocently curled up on the back of the couch.
What? Who, me?
Maxine is now 14 1/2 years old and lately we’ve been having some issues around her “inappropriate elimination.” Long story short: we resolved some of this peeing in all the wrong places by doubling her dosage of Cosequin. Cats, as many of you know, are stoic creatures. They keep their pain to themselves; if they choose to let you know, it’s often in oblique ways such as peeing in all the wrong places. Our theory is that Maxine, due to her age, probably has pain or at least discomfort in her hips and the trip from the back porch or from the living room to the nearest litter box is a road too far. When we doubled her Cosequin (that is, giving her a dose with her morning meal as well as her nighttime meal), she perked up, became more alert and interactive, and ceased to pee in the living room. (The back porch is still an issue, probably because she has to use steps and a cat door to get in and out.)
But apparently that didn’t mean that we had found and cleaned up all the places she had peed on in the past couple of months. So the morning of Friday the 13th, before I went to work, I pulled the area rug from the living room, wrestling it from underneath a rather large ottoman and rolling it up so I could drag it into the garage where it can stay forever as far I’m concerned. I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to getting rid of the smell of cat urine; fortunately, my husband has taken on the task of soaking the porch rug with Nature’s Miracle, sucking up the residue with a shampooer, and repeating … indefinitely.
That was the start of my Friday the 13th. The rest of the day was filled with angst. I could barely motivate myself to answer emails. I didn’t go for a walk during the workday because, as per summer in Florida, it was too effing hot and humid. A twenty-minute promenade around the complex leaves me with sweat stains in all the wrong places. I almost blew off going to the gym after work. I’m glad I did go since I needed to work off some negative energy, but the road trip from my workplace to the gym is like the highway from Hell.
Eventually I made it home, disgruntled and peevish (my husband’s word). He had spent the day cleaning the porch rug. We had dinner, drank wine and watched an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. We got ready for bed. What happened next returned the luck to Friday the 13th.
I flipped open my iPad, something I don’t often do right before bedtime and I can’t say why I did it this night. But I did. On the screen, a series of email notifications bubbled up. One was from Z Publishing. The subject line was “Your Submission Decision.” The first sentence of the email read “We at Z Publishing House would like to congratulate you for having your writing accepted into our upcoming Florida’s Emerging Writers publication!”
It’s all a blur after that. I think I started shouting. My husband ran into my room. I read him the email. We’ve been celebrating every since.
Way back in April, I received an email from one of the staff at Z Publishing, inviting me to submit some of my writing for their upcoming series of America’s Emerging Writers. She had visited my blog and thought I might be interested. Well, that was an understatement. I did a quick search on Z Publishing, found a forum on Reddit that pretty much verified the entity as legit so I went to work. I managed to pull together five short short stories–the word count is 1250–and sent them in. I had only a couple of days to meet the early bird deadline, and my husband remembers very well how I closed myself up in my room tweaking those short stories to fit Z’s requirements … and still make sense.
Ever since I have been waiting. Now I know that three months is not a long time to wait to hear from a publisher, but I don’t do this very often. Well, actually, I don’t do this. I can count on one hand the number of submissions I’ve made in the last several years.
The publication date is September 6, with preorders available starting August 6. At that time, I’ll join their affiliates program and will be able to provide you all with a link to Z Publishing so you can purchase Florida’s Emerging Writers or any book that strikes your fancy. I will get a commission for any sales that come through that link. That’s icing.
The cake is the publication of one of my stories in a printed book.
The luck of Friday the 13th has been redeemed.
One last thing: I really owe it to ALL of you for being part of my life, for encouraging me, following my blog, reading and sharing my stories and WIPs. I know this is a very small success, and I won’t stop here.
Marie at 1 Write Way 