Monday Markets: The Fantasy Fiction Edition

Fables and nursery rhymes.

It’s that time again. Approximately every fortnight, a catchall market-conference-author appearance-publishapalooza listing, this one somewhat abbreviated as I’m working on a fiction piece under deadline (wish me luck). Hope you all will find something beneficial in this partly fantasy-based list, with dashes of mystery, paranormal, and even academics among the fables and fairy tales.

 

1. Deadline March 1!   

   Got any bright bits of poetry or prose concerned with the lighter months of the year, approximately April through June? If so, you might like to consider sending them to this call for submissions for Beltane 2016 courtesy of Three Drops from a Cauldron. They note interest in: “Any myth, fairytale, or bit of folklore with a green, golden and growing feel – or even bright beauty with a dark side too: Persephone, Blodeuwedd.”  Submit up to 6 poems, or three flash fiction pieces, or one prose poem (750 words or fewer), with a short third-person bio. Full guidelines are available at the link. Good luck!

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2. Like your mysteries with flares of the paranormal?  If you answered yes, then you might enjoy C. Hope Clark’s Edisto-based series of thriller novels, “flawed heroine” and all. And, what’s more, you might learn from some of Clark’s upcoming writing workshops. Most are in the southern United States, particularly South Carolina, where Clark hails from, but if you’re nearby, you might like to visit. In addition to running a successful Web site, Ms. Clark offers free and paid e-newsletters. The free Funds for Writers newsletter lists some of the upcoming dates for Clark’s appearances, which I have excerpted some of here (many more are available on her Web site):

   Mar 3 – McCormick County Library, SC – Character Development – 6:30 PM
   Mar 10 – Calhoun County Library, SC – Character Development – 6:30 PM
   Mar 14 -21 – Edisto Beach, SC. Signing at Edisto Bookstore
   Mar 24 – Anderson County Library, SC – Character Development – 6:30 PM
   Apr 14 – Calhoun County Library, SC – Successful Editing – 6:30 PM
   Apr 28 – Anderson County Library, SC – Successful Editing – 6:30 PM
   May 5 – McCormick County Library, SC – Getting Published – 6:30 PM
   May 24 – Darlington Library, SC – Getting Published – 6:30 PM
   Jun 23-25 – Midwest Writers Center Conference – Davenport, IA
   Aug 18-21 -Killer Nashville Conference, Franklin, TN

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3. Due March 30. Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine is also looking for your fantastic(al), folkloric, fabulistic fiction; this time, the theme is “rain,” and it must appear as more than just a singular word in the story. The guidelines are fierce, so your fiction should follow and buttress that. If you want to get a good idea of what they’re seeking, read their site (for instance, their soaring Valentine’s Day edition) and/or purchase or borrow their books from the library or a friend, such as Beyond the Glass Slipper (by EC’s own Dr. Kate Wolford) or Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus, to name but a couple.
   

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4. Due March 31. For those academics among us, or those who still practice the art outside academe, the Writing Between the Lines Symposium invites proposal papers (abstracts) of 300 words or fewer on the intersection of the theory and the practice of creative writing. They note: “We invite papers which examine the lively dynamic between praxis and critical appraisal; explore the nature of creative writing as a research methodology; investigate its position within pedagogy and evaluate how it may be developed in order to elevate approaches to high quality research.” I first read about this call for 20-minute presentations on the Rhys Tranter blog. The proposals must be submitted electronically, and the symposium itself is in Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

As always, I’m wishing you a fulfilling week of writing/blogging, art-making, and living!

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Good times, bad times

May the sun be ever setting on your troubles! (Photo with filter applied)

First and foremost, it has been a rough couple weeks for one of the kids (and thus, my whole family), such that I’m thankful and glad it’s almost at a close (we hope). So, I haven’t had the time to read blogs and comment–at least not to the degree that I’d like. That should change as the days go on.

To balance out a tiny bit of the terrible, I’ve had a double-dip of the literary toe into pleasant waters. In short, I’ve had two microfiction pieces published. One is “old,” having been published in October 2015, and I just found out about it. I owe my belated thanks and gratitude to The Drabble for publishing “A Lotta Guts.” If you’re not familiar with this term or concept, basically most definitions say that a drabble is a short literary story, or microfiction piece, of exactly 100 words, not including the title. So, it’s exceedingly succinct. Somehow, I was able to craft and send a brief darling forth into the world (you can, too), and they published it. If you’re interested in the connection between American actor Ernest Borgnine and infectious disease, you shouldn’t miss this speculative fiction story. While you’re there, do be sure to partake of other “shortness[es] of breadth,” which is The Drabble’s motto.

That was the older “new news.” Now, the new news is that I just had a 50-word story, called “Love Offerings,” published on 50-Word Stories on February 22, 2016; they list me as Leigh Smith there. They publish two “bite-sized” stories daily, so your palate is always satisfied. And, if you enjoy my story or all or some of them, please give them a thumb’s-up (there’s a “like” at the bottom of each day’s stories). I feel very honored to have been included on this forum–and with another L-named person (this one was a Lee) on the same date. A big barbaric yawp-y shout-out to 50-Word Stories and its editor, Tim Sevenhuysen. Unless otherwise noted, they read submissions between the 1st and 15th of every month, and publish what they like on their Web site, with you retaining the rights. Give it a go if you like writing the short stuff.

So, a short(ish) post befits a couple of my recent short publications. This will be a Monday Markets stand-in for the time being, until I’m off and running again with blogging. Have a creative week, everyone!

 

 

 

Monday Writing Markets (and More): The Icefire Edition

I keep written & digital files. How about you?

Some say the universe will end in boiling,

Others say in Frost, or Snow.

But from what I know of roiling,

I prefer the fate whose face waits to show.

 

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Whew, I’m glad that’s out there in the aether now. Moving on . . .

To writing. So, keep in mind, carpe diem (carpe scribere diem? why yes, I’ve forgotten high-school Latin completely). In other words, seize the day and write!

To help you in that regard, I’m wielding another edition of the somewhat-biweekly sword that is Monday Markets (& More). Partake, imagine, write, edit, submit, accept, integrate, and enjoy!

1. Tonight only (Feb. 15), starting at 7:30 p.m.!

   See feminist firebrand, author, and essayist Claire Vaye Watkins—she of “Let us burn this motherfucking system to the ground” fame—and poet Steven Schreiner at the River Styx reading series in St. Louis, Missouri, at the Tavern of Fine Arts. Entrance fees are $5 at the door or $4 for students, members, and seniors.

2. Deadline: as soon as possible! Milkfist, a self-described “compendium of art and writing for stammering low-lifes who barely know what year it is” wants your poetry, art, and/or nonfiction. They are a paying market. Check out their guidelines or buy a back issue.
3. Deadline: Feb. 20, 2016. After the Happily Ever After (anthology) by TransMundane Press is in search of new blood. That is, they want updated takes on old (fairy)tales like Cinderella, Goldilocks, or even Snow White. Exactly what does happen after Ariel gets her voice back and marries her prince? Does Cinderella ever see her Fairy Godmother again; does she keep that glass slipper forevermore? Does Red Riding Hood grow up and develop agoraphobia or, alternatively, an overwhelming fear of canines? It’s up to you to give them new experiences.
   

   Thanks to my audience volunteer (who didn’t even have to get sawed in half, except by the photographer!).

4. Win a book, through Feb. 27! Author Sarah Potter is giving away a copy of her newest novel, the sci-fi crossover Desiccation. This novel is suitable for ages 14 to 90-plus, as she says. Here’s her blog post about the Goodreads #giveaway.
5. March 13, 2016: Grammar Ghoul Press (full disclosure: they reprinted one of my poems in their Spring 2015 edition of The Ghouls’ Review) is holding a Winter 2016 Fiction competition. There’s a $10 entry fee per fiction story, 100 to about 3500 words (so, both flash fiction and short story categories), and a $100 top prize, per category, as well as publication in the Winter/Spring 2016 issue of The Ghouls’ Review. Multiple submissions allowed. Be advised that they like weird and wacky tales, so give them a whirl if oddities are in your wheelhouse.
6. Deadline: Now through March 15. The Indiana Review has waived their traditional $3-per-entry general submission fee for their Spring 2016 window. Get your general submissions of poetry, fiction, or visual artwork in pronto (only 1 submission per genre)!

 

Now, as Rush might write in a lyric, get out there and rock!

A Winter Tirade, with Photos

Snow-city panorama

The day is a diffuse white, blunted to gray. Periodically, birds burst from ledges or eaves or from the last spent leaves (ah, yes, bright, but still spent). Their bodies strafe the eye. Confused snowflakes cavort with, shuffle by, skitter, shimmy against, bump into, and bend with the now-visible air. If the winter air were malleable matter, I think it would be a blooming sort of smoldering steam: an extra-spectral substance of an inhuman colour, nebulous, neither white nor gray nor blue. Nor any other.

Still, I can’t drag my eyes away . . .

Breadbox buildings have been dropped down, brick by brick, deposited perhaps a century’s worth ago, from when there was no snow as it is now. Today’s snow—we call it ours—is a (by)product, a staged phenomenon, a commodity, and a managed entropy, made sheerly to be seen. A honeycomb of progress, humming eternalwise, have we created to view it, the perspective extending farther than these eyes can see, perhaps any eyes. Visualized, viralized, winter’s reality—its realness—always in the wings, parade and charade only a click-blink away. Under-thumbed, if you will.

Yesteryear’s snows, it seems to me, were an occurrence. Better still: an event, a surprise, and an opportunity for communion. With each other. And it offers up unparalleled opportunities to link with extraneous aspects of self–atomstuff (or starstuff or plantstuff or any number of substances)–that earlier were perhaps closer to the vest, held to the heart, even.

Now, on a tide of leveraging and mergers, calculated risks and calendars

A different day; a different cathedral

and broken benefits, winter starts to recede, if such evolution can be eye-tracked.

In places, the spires are hewn, nearly gone, used up, spat out among true detritus. Heretofore, Nature hobbled along, alas, just barely, as we left it alone, keeping our jaundice-ringed cuticles to ourselves. But has it now passed the point of no-intervention, here in the Anthropocene?

The snow, once inescapable, rendered incapable, salted like earth, sewn like the kind of dragon’s teeth that were never intended to grow. Yet, ice-wind can still whistle clean through the ribs, ghost song, so long-gone.

Will we listen, or just push it away and adapt?

What say you?

This squirrel has found a lunch scrap of old, mustardy bread.

Friday Fictioneers on a Monday: A Mother’s Mettle

Photo ©ceayr

A Mother’s Mettle

Genre: Realistic fiction

100 words

Mary Strongheart pushed the stroller up the dusty street, her baby tangled in blankets, silent.

She wanted the senator to see, everybody to see, such that they could no longer turn away.

Hana had given her the gate code, but she’d keep the ruse. A knot of fear fisted in her stomach and seared her throat. She’d never been close to the magnificent home. Will my camera work? Will he listen?

Offering silent prayer to the sky, Mary signaled Hana at the back gate.

Soon, the squealing of plastic wheels dovetailed with shouts and the crackle of the guard’s taser.

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I don’t get to do too many Friday Fictioneers challenges, but this one kind of sprang from my mind fully formed like Athena. And it dovetailed with this article that a friend had recently pointed out to me (thanks, Brenda).

Most of us, unfortunately, have heard of the horrific water crisis in Flint, Michigan. But you might not have not heard about the contamination of water (and more) in areas of the Southwestern and Western United States (not even to mention the coal mining and shale fracking going on all over the world). Nor is Flint, Michigan, alone, either in the States or the world, with regard to environmental contamination. I did a little further research, discovering that some 15,000 abandoned uranium mines exist in the U.S., and there’s no apparatus set up to get these dangerous sites cleaned. One group, Clean up the Mines, calls this “America’s secret Fukushima.” One activist also notes that the Native American nations of North America are the proverbial ‘canaries in the mine’ for the rest of the United States on this critical environmental issue.

As such, then, I conceived of Mary Strongheart as an indigenous person whose child had been affected in some detrimental fashion by the contamination of their water.

Read and/or link up your own Friday Fictioneers post at this linky, and while you’re there, thank Rochelle for administrating these challenges (and adding her own fiction!) like elegant clockwork every week.