The Overcast speculative fiction podcast has just released my story “Something Rich and Strange”.

In an alternate version of the Victorian era, a young woman accompanies her professor father to the Change Storm, the bizarre phenomenon on which he’s a leading expert. Her father and his mansplaining assistant expect her to fall into the role of audience/love interest/impediment/rescuee that is the lot of professors’ daughters in so many pulp adventure stories, but she has ideas of her own. 

http://peoples-ink.com/podcast/episode-17-something-rich-and-strange-by-mike-reeves-mcmillan/

Space-based future stories, pro rates.

http://www.baen.com/baenmemorialaward.asp

Well, “Brother Blue” is still a novelette, just, at 16,300 words (the cutoff is 17,500).

Why is this important? Because there are some markets that will take a novelette but not a novella, and even those that take both will think harder about buying a novella.

On the other hand, if it needs another 1500 or 2000 words to be the story it needs to be, it will by all means get them.

Today I strengthened the romance section (made it a site of conflict, not just a thing that happened on the way to the resolution), and also pumped up the part just before the ending, so that it relates more clearly to the middle, and the ending doesn’t seem abrupt, rushed, and unearned.

At least, I hope it doesn’t. My faithful editor will tell me. And then I’ll show it to some other people, and get their thoughts. I want this one to be the best it can be, because I feel like if I work on it hard enough, I’ll be able to sell it to a pro market. I’m not rushing to get it out, because I’d rather take the extra time and do it right.

My story “Something Rich and Strange” will be podcast on The Overcast next week. 

A Victorian miss in an alternate version of our world finds her true self at the Change Storm, the bizarre natural phenomenon that her father studies.

(I’ll drop a link once it’s up.)

http://peoples-ink.com/the-overcast/

I’ve spent the morning setting up a new sub-website devoted to short stories. Initially, I just have a (database-driven) page that lists my publications, with links and cover art, but the plan is to also make it the site for my forthcoming nonfiction book, The Craft and Commerce of Short Story Writing. 

http://csidemedia.com/shortstories/

In Memory: A Tribute to Sir Terry Pratchett is a charity anthology in aid of Alzheimer’s research, by fans of the late great author. I’m genuinely proud to be included among the contributors.

Pre-release, it’s got great reviews, and although I don’t formally review books that I contribute to, I’d like to say that several of the stories moved me deeply or made me laugh out loud.

Today is release day on Amazon. If you’re a Pratchett fan and/or want to contribute to a cause close to his heart, pick up a copy.

(Linking to Amazon seems to be weird today. The book isn’t actually called “Robot Check”.)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0163JZBLE/

Poor “Mail Order Witch”. Nobody wants you. 

I’ve just submitted this story of mine for the eleventh time. I think if this one turns it down, I may try submitting to general rather than fantasy markets. It has an unreliable narrator, after all, so it’s not certain that the fantasy element really exists….

“Brother Blue” is complete in first draft. Came in at 13,000 words, in the end, an awkward length to sell, but I like it. It’s what I think of as a Zelaznian world, strange and wonderful, though the story itself isn’t at all a Zelazny story.

A student at a magical college that travels between worlds is separated from his friend, and strives to understand how the College works so he can get back to where his friend lives. Along the way, he has to deal with multiple distractions and temptations to abandon his quest, but each time, he chooses the path of love. It’s a celebration of the power of friendship, and the family that we choose for ourselves.

It could probably stretch into a novella – there are a couple of places with potential to expand, though they’re kind of digressions to the main thrust of the story. But I think I’ll try it out on the market as a novelette first, after my editor’s been over it.

Three and a half thousand words on a new story, “Leaving Our Town,” and another thousand on “Brother Blue”. I think that makes a good point to take a break and look for reprint markets for some stories for which the rights have reverted.

Looks like I’ve sold another story that I’d given up on. This particular market has had it since November last year, and never responded to my 90-day query in February, but I couldn’t think of another market to submit it to, so I let it sit.

Today they contacted me to say they thought they’d bought it, but had just realised that they hadn’t. (Their internal systems have been kind of a train wreck, by all indications.)