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Adventures in Querying

The time in between publications is like watching a duck on the water. He just looks like he’s floating there, but under the surface, his legs are paddling like a motherf***er.

I am that duck.

But yeah, the last thing I got published was a short story in Uncharted magazine last year. Go check out “Grand Canyon,” inspired by a story my college friend Matt wrote about the Grand Canyon disappearing from the Arizona desert. I spent like thirty years wondering, “Where did it go?” This story offers a possible answer.

Please feel free to download another story, “Snowblind,” which was published in the now–out-of-print The Bears of Winter, but is now available free—do you love free? Of course you do—over at ko-fi.com.

It was originally published in 2014, which as you know was a long time ago. Would I write it differently now? Perhaps. But I’m happy enough with how it turned out as it is.

Adventures in querying

As you know (Bob), I’m querying two manuscripts in an effort to find a literary agent (or agents) to represent them. I’ve started writing about the experience on my blog, because apparently I think the idea of failing in public is really ingenious.

But seriously, I do think that it’s important to embrace the prospect of failure and make it a little less scary, for myself at least. There will also be a little accountability involved—I can’t fail unless I send out query letters and writing samples to prospective agents, after all. I’m hoping that for the next four weeks I can send out at least one query letter every weekday. Twenty queries, in other words. Will I fall short? Probably! But it’ll encourage me to send out more than I might have otherwise.

You can follow along here.

Submissions reader for Uncharted magazine

Speaking of Uncharted magazine, they recently put out a call for volunteer readers for story submissions, and I threw my hat in the ring. I feel like I’ve been a bit out of the loop on the literary community for a long time, and I wanted to do something to contribute. And I really like so many stories that they’ve published, which feature a broad diversity of writers and subjects.

So I was really pleased when they accepted! My stint as a reader lasts for six months, and I’m really looking forward to digging in. Go check out their website and the different genres of stories they publish. You may find your next favorite writer there.

And that’s all for this month. See you in May!