Well January went unexpectedly well.
On the 5th I got a letter from a publisher asking to see the full manuscript of one of my crime novels, Dead Happy, book one of the Murder Tydfil series, so fingers cross for that, I should hear something by the end of this month (February 2015).
Then on the 17th, I got an email from Xchlyer publishing, telling me that one of my short stories has been accepted into an anthology to be published in May. This is a steampunk piece, the first steampunk piece I have ever written, and I’m dead proud of it, thoroughly enjoyed writing it. When I sent it off, I was rather hopeful that it would be accepted. Mind you, who’s not hopeful when making a submission? But there again, I had passed it under the eyes of several friends, so I’d had a fair bit of reader feedback before I submitted and knocked the worst of the rough edges off. Have been working with the editors to polish the story, so fingers crossed it’ll be as perfect as a story can be when printed.
On the 16th I’d had a quiet text chat with the guy I do the freelance editing for, about one of the websites he writes for, asked for an intro, got it and on the 18th agreed some submissions with the guy who runs the site. I made my first submission on the 19th and since then I’ve had two articles published:
- A Flash In The Pan or Just a Firefly a consideration of the series Firefly and its wrap up movie Serenity.
- Kicking Out The 5th Passenger a review of a new sci-fi / horror movie started by a Kickstarter project.
Both of these and future articles will be available on www.warpedfactor.com, a site for the geeks amongst us. I have a further three articles accepted for publication in February.
It’s all unpaid, but it’s interesting and looks good on my writer’s resume. I’ve also managed to get a great website up and running, well okay, a mate of mine managed to get it up and running, but it’s mine to maintain and keep up to date. So if you want more info on me and what I’m up to, find the links to anything I’ve written, take a look at www.gailbwilliams.com.
Then, in a rather surprise turn of events, I had an email on the 25th January. Now the email itself wasn’t the surprise, I was expecting it as it was the results of a recent poetry competition run by the Swansea and District Writers’ Circle, results to be announced on the 4th, the surprise was that I won! Poetry is not my thing and I only made the submission to ensure that there were a decent number of entries to judge from. I would have been happy not to have ranked at all, so winning was a welcome surprise and a huge bonus.
So I’ve had a great start to the year and I hope it continues. Who knows; maybe 2015 will be the year my writing really takes off.
The Write Route 