First Submission

First, another update.  I’m up to 27,000 words on Masters.  I got about 900 words done on Friday night, and about 400 or 500 during the day yesterday.  I meant to do more, but I felt this weird need to watch the kids so my wife could go do some girly things like shopping and what have you.  Then after she got back, we decided to pop of a movie via Netflix.  Their live streaming thing through our PS-3 rocks.  I still love our Apple TV, but at $7.99 a month for all the movies you can watch, the Netflix app rocks.  So anyway, we’d never seen 2012.  I’d heard it was ridiculously abysmal in every way except for special effects, but what the heck, we weren’t paying anything extra for it.  Yeah, it was ludicrous.  But it had some entertainment value, regardless.

For some reason, I got to thinking about zombies while watching the movie, and I go the idea to write a story from the zombie’s point of view.  What if they’re not the stupid, slow shambling monsters we’ve come to know and love?  What do they think about their lot in life, for lack of a better term?

So when we went upstairs at about 2315-ish, I started writing.  About 2300 words later, at 0120, it was done.

This morning, after breakfast, I read back through it and changed a couple little things, expanded on one particular rant, and gave it to the better half to read.  She thought it was good, but quirky.  So great, now what?  I got to thinking why not submit it someplace?  I mean, I plan to sell stuff via ebooks, but nothing says I can’t also sell to traditional publishing outlets also, if they’ll have them.  Early this afternoon, my wife’s friend came by, and I asked her to give a read through as well.  Again, good feedback.

I looked around on the web, trying to decide where to submit it, and straight off came to Weird Tales.  Their description of what they’re looking for sounds just like my story, IMHO.  So I took a short while to write up a cover letter, rolled the Scrivener compiler to make an rtf in proper format, and sent it off to their electronic submissions people.  I got the acknowledgment email a few minutes later.

So that was easy.  My first time submitting to a publisher.  It actually seems a bit anti-climactic.  Not that I expected fireworks or anything, but man.  That was EASY.  I guess we’ll see what they have to say in 6 to 8 weeks.  It’ll probably be no, but that’s cool.  I’ll just try somewhere else or sell it via Kindle et al.  Point is to finish the stories and try to sell them.  It’s not about ego or anything.  It’s just business.

So I’m not going to post A Zombie’s Life like I have my other shorts.  Weird Tales considers putting it up anywhere as having published it, and thus won’t consider it.  When they reject it, I’ll put it up.  Or not.  We’ll see.

🙂