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Christmas Wish

 Persistence.  Although 27 doesn’t exactly equate to a tonne, it is a respectable number of stories to have published.  In addition to The Space between Atoms this week—it’ll be up soon!—I have had another acceptance to celebrate.


“Christmas Wish” has been accepted by Calliope, one of my favorite places to publish.  They seem to get my offbeat sense of humor.  This story came to me out of the blue and I wrote it very quickly.


I then sent it to a zine that didn’t have the courtesy even to reply.  I then saw a themed issue for a horror zine that looked promising.  They were doing a holiday issue and all I had to do was shift the tale from summer to winter, and presto!  It was a Christmas story.


The themed magazine liked it, but they said it had too much humor in it.  That sometimes happens when I write horror.  (Not always, as is implied by “sometimes”.)  This one was guilty as charged.  It is a fun story, I hope.





My next thought was Calliope.  Now, I’m not a member of MENSA (I don’t even know how to join), but Calliope is a great venue for stories that have strange humor in them.  I was pleased that they accepted it.  The only probably was Tom Petty’s issue, the waiting.


This year’s winter issue was full.  I’ll need to wait another year for it to appear.  It’s worth it.  In this biz when you find an editor who likes your work it’s worth the wait.  Probably in early 2022 “Christmas Wish” will appear.  I’ll add another shout-out then.  The Space between Atoms runs to 67 installments, so it’ll likely be done by then.  Hopefully there will be something lined up to follow it.

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