I'm Published!

Good Monday,

I’ve been sitting on some news for the last week or so.

I’m officially published!

My first-prize comedic fantasy short story was published in the most recent edition of Griffin Publishers’ E-zine. It’s amazing. Here’s the link, go download it. Lol.

No, seriously, it’s definitely worth the $2.99. Aside from my piece, there are some awesome shorts and poems in there.

Now, first-prize? Yes. And there’s a pretty awesome story that goes with that.

As I’ve said recently, the first week of this month was my week at Seton Hill for this semester. During residency, there are “genre dinners.” This equates to a gathering of all fantasy/science fiction writers or all romance writers or all horror writers, etc. Since I write fantasy mainly, I attended the fantasy/scifi dinner.

Every res at said dinner, there is a reading competition. One of the students who is further along in the program collects a list of people who want to read. Three judges are selected and then all those who want, read a short selection. There are prizes for first and second place.

I went to the dinner this semester intending to read my flash fiction piece “Musings of a Free-Faller,” a bit about a guy falling down a bottomless pit. As is known to happen, however, plans changed.

One of my friends won a vampire trivia game at a student teaching module she attended. Being fantasy/scifi nerds, we decided to play this game at the dinner. A few questions in, my team was asked “Vampires are afraid of water. True or False?” Because I wasn’t thinking, I talked my teammate into saying false.

The answer, obviously, is true. Vamps can only cross water in their coffin. Now, this is one of those games that has little explanations on each card. This card noted the coffin fact and proceeded to say that another way to kill a vampire was to steal his sock, fill it with pebbles, and throw it into a lake. The vamp would jump in after it and drown.

That struck me as one of the funniest things I’d ever heard, and I decided that this story needed to be told. And so while others read, I sat quietly in the back of the room and wrote this story in my head. I then got up and performed, in my humble opinion, a stellar version of the account. I guess the judges thought it was pretty stellar too. They awarded me first prize—an autographed copy of “Redshirts” by John Scalzi.

And now you can read my award-winning story. Admittedly, it loses something without my performance, but it’s still worth the read.

Again, here’s the link to the download page.

Oh, and writers. Griffin Publishers is actively seeking shorts, poems, articles, interviews, etc. Check out there submissions page for more details.