An Exciting Call for Submissions!

In Today's Journal

* Quote of the Day
* The Copyediting Course
* An Exciting Call for Submissions
* The Writing
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

"Inspiration, n. The birth of a notion." Dr. Mardy Grothe (See Of Interest)

The Copyediting Course

Two folks have expressed an interest thus far. If you're interested in this, let me know. I won't bother with investing the time to put it together unless there's enough interest.

Of course, I might still write a nonfiction book off the idea, but it wouldn't have nearly the same impact because it wouldn't include me talking one-on-one with you about your writing.

An Exciting Call for Submissions

Frank Theodat of Pulp, Pipe, and Poetry (P3) is seeking submissions for the P3 anthology, The Boys Book of Adventure.

There's no upfront payment for stories, but this is a very worthy cause. If you're interested, read on for the submission guidelines:

Frank wrote, in part, "As a father, I hate the stupid myth that 'boys don't read.' So this is our contribution to help kill the myth and encourage a regular reading habit among boys."

Hard Deadline for Submissions: February 20th, 2025

• Email submissions with .doc, .docx, or .rtf file extensions to p3publishing23@gmail.com

• Not Genre Specific: I will take fantasy, science fiction, mystery, westerns, space opera, adventure stories, frontier stories, fables, etc. so long as they display aspirational themes, Christian values, heroes that inspire.... You get the idea.

• Content: You are writing boys' fiction. Entertain them! Some violence is fine...nothing over the top, please.

• Word count: 2,000 - 5,000

• Rights: Each contributor holds the rights to their individual stories. P3 does not own your stories! I'm not interested in gobbling up IPs. You are free to publish outside of the collection after the release date.

• Payment: No upfront payment, but PubShare.com will split all royalties equally on the back end. If this is a deal breaker, I understand. Just let me know in advance.

I encourage every short story writer out there to submit a story for this new publication. I've already submitted one story and will submit others.

Promoting literacy among boys, as promoting literacy among all children, is always an extremely worthy cause.

The Writing

Yesterday I mentioned the novel was about to move into a 'hit' chapter (the chapter in which the Blackwell Ops operative plies his trade). I was no more than maybe five minutes out of the novel when I wrote that, yet it was inaccurate.

Actually the story was about to move into a 'meeting the contact' chapter. For a Blackwell Ops book, that's anywhere from two to five or more chapters from the 'hit' chapter.

That's how involved I get in the stories as I'm writing them. So this little blurb is only to reassure you:

If you get so involved with the story that you know only what's unfolding around you at the moment and forget everything else, that's fine. In fact, it's perfect. That's how you convey the characters' authentic story.

What I did NOT do yesterday was write a short story for the Bradbury Challenge this week. So I'll begin today by writing a story titled "Down to the Wire." At the moment I know nothing else about it.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week: “Inspiring Words"

Writing Challenge Today (Scroll down. Some interesting gems in this one.)

Know how to read cursive? The National Archives wants you They aren't kidding, but they also aren't paying.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 580

Writing of Blackwell Ops 35: Seldem Dunn

Day 1…… 3796 words. To date…… 3796
Day 2…… 3389 words. To date…… 7185
Day 3…… 4085 words. To date…… 11270
Day 4…… 4234 words. To date…… 15504
Day 5…… 4543 words. To date…… 20047
Day 6…… 5362 words. To date…… 25410

Fiction for January…………………… 74303
Fiction for 2025………………………. 74303
Nonfiction for January……………….. 19120
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 19120
2025 consumable words…………….. 93423

Average Fiction WPD (January)……. 4128

2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 1
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 105
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 274
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.