Waiting

It has been too long since I updated anything here! This time (he said again) I will do my best to update things at least once per month.

Status of stories...

Accepted but not yet out:
"The Inside Man" for Moonstone's GREEN HORNET CHRONICLES
"Trail of the Brujo" for TALES FROM THE CAULDRON
"Zorro and the Bruja" for MORE TALES OF ZORRO
"Invisible Empire" for THE AVENGER CHRONICLES II

Submitted:
"Adrift on Other Seas" for HIGH SEAS CTHULHU II
"The Cwoss-Time Twaveler" for TIMES OF TROUBLE
"The Adventure of the Ethical Assassin" for Moonstone's Sherlock Holmes Anthology

In Progress:
"Kumiho" for Moonstone's Kolchak, the Night Stalker Anthology
"Like Magic" for MORE TALES OF ZORRO

Handling Rejection

What do you do when you spend many hours on a story, shaping and polishing it into something special, only to have it rejected? After the wailing and gnashing of teeth, I try to pick out the errors that the editor has (hopefully) pointed out, show it to a couple of beta-readers, and send it back out there.

Only, this one keeps coming back.

"Trail of the Brujo" has come back (again) from a market not to be named here with a very blunt rejection letter. The letter says that I need to become "a much more careful writer". After wailing and gnashing a bit I looked at it and say that there were two (2) big errors on the first page. I'd changed a line I didn't like and had missed deleting the original. The effect was that I had the same idea twice in the first paragraph. I'd also removed my contact information when I workshopped the story and had forgotten to put it back in befure submitting the story.

My bad, and it's easy to see a rejection for those two things alone.

The other comment was more cryptic.

...having a witch not believe in shapeshifting shows that you do not know the
subject you are writing about.

I can see how this could be a valid point. I'm puzzled by the fict that the witch/brujo character in the story, never says he disbelieves in shapeshifting. In fact, there's no discussion of shapeshifting anywhere in the story.

Color me puzzled.

Still, O best beloved, it is not wise to argue with an editor. I have made the corrections I could and sent the story on to a new market.

I may be getting better at this rejection business. There was on;y a days-worth of wailing and gnashing of teeth this time. (That will probably help with the dental bills too.)

My Stories To Date

A friend recently asked about what I had in print and I realized I wasn't sure. Record keeping isn't exactly my best thing. It made sense to do something about that, and the blog seemed a good place to do it.

Many thanks to Win Scott Eckert for helping me to figure out how to make the cool slideshow feature work on this blog! I’m insufferably pleased with it!

For anyone who is curious, here is the tally for the moment:

STORY APPEARS IN...
"The Legacy of the Fox" (essay) MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE
"The Mask of the Monster" TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN – VOL 1
"Ex Calce Liberatus" TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN – VOL 2
"The Heart of the Moon" TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN – VOL 3
"Captain Future and the Lunar Peril" TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN – VOL 4
"Fool’s Gold" HELL’S HANGMEN
"The Cold Comes South" “In Lovecraft’s Shadow” Issue 1
"Mysterious Dan’s Legacy" ARKHAM TALES
"Clown Fish" HIGH SEAS CTHULHU
"Snake Oil" FRONTIER CTHULHU (Origin Award Semi-Finalist)
"Fire Lilies" A FIELD GUIDE TO SURREAL BOTANY
Enemy of My Enemy (With Mike Bullock) TALES OF ZORRO

IN FRENCH
TITLE APPEARS IN...
"Le masque du monstre" LES COMPAGNONS DE L'OMBRE (Tome 1)
"Ex Calce Liberatus" LES COMPAGNONS DE L'OMBRE (Tome 1)
"Le masque du monstre" LES NOMBRUESES VIES DE MAIGRET
"La voie de la grue" LA SAGA DE MME. AROMOS (Tome 4)

ACCEPTED BUT NOT YET IN PRINT
TITLE WILL APPEAR IN...
"The Way of the Crane" TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN – VOL 5
"In Forgetfulness Divine" THE AVENGER CHRONICLES
"Nano-Domini" ROBOTS BEYOND
"Decently and Quietly Dead" “In Lovecraft’s Shadow” Issue 2

Post-Apocalyptic Rats

I finished off a short chapter and sent it to Leah for her review. It's part of THE GIRL WHO WALKS THROUGH WALLS and tells the touching story of a young girl trapped in a storm drain with an intelligent rat from beyond.

Will Rene DeTritus be able to save Amelia? What part will the Vicarmat-1280 play in his efforts? And just what was the Chorch of England thinking when they shifted all of their clerical positions over to robots, anyway.

For those, and many other answers, you'll just have to wait for chapter 3.

Big Update

I am not so great as a blogger :(

Since our last thrilling episode a few things have happened.

1) TALES OF ZORRO is out! Yay!
2) FIELD GUIDE OF SURREAL BOTANY is out! I'm eager looking forward to getting my copy.
3) My story was accepted for THE AVENGER CHRONICLES.
4) I wrote something experimental for HAUNTED LEGENDS. It was rejected but I have hopes it can make it in another market.
5) My story for MORE TALES OF ZORRO wasn't approved, but the hints seem to indicate it could work with the right sort of re-writing.
6) I wrote something I feel pretty good about for THE WORLD IS DEAD. That's an anthology of zombie fiction edited by Kim Paffenroth who is a professor of religion and horror author. (I feel less alone in the world).

I'm also at work on a project with my friend Leah Clarke, it's kind of Charles Dickens meets H.P. Lovecraft in the post-apocalyptic future. I just read Leah's first draft of chapter 1 and it's fantastic! (It's good to colaborate with talented people like her, they make me look good by association. On that note I'm looking forward to colaborations with Micah, John, and Bobbie in the near future.)

Have You Ever...

Ever written something and thought... "Well, at least I'm done" and then gotten back an amazing response?

I finished my most spiritually ambitious piece of writing this week. "Nano-Domini" is the story of a medical nanobot and his developing relationship with the scientist whose body he shares. It's meant to parallel the relationship of God and humanity from an unusual perspective.

I was worried about it being too preachy (it might stll be just a bit) and it felt clunky as I was writing it. I ran it past my writer's group thinking I would probably get some kind words about how not every story can be your best.

The responses I've gotten back have been better than to anything else I've ever submitted there(!) I'm floored and surprised (very pleasantly so) to get the comments I'm getting, and from people whose opinions I really respect and value!

Something went right and I'm really tickled about it! Now I get to be nervous about my story making the ROBOTS BEYOND cut.

Leah says that things look hopeful for her story (a wonderfully creepy/funny Lovecraftean tale with robots) and I got an advance look at the rewrite of Bobbie's Civil War robots story (which was very good before and is amazing now). It would be so cool if we all made it!

Frontier Cthulhu Review

The estimable Matthew Carpenter who posts lots of reviews on Amazon has weighed in on Frontier Cthulhu. His review cam be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/2wkgv6 and scroll down the page a bit.

Here's what he had to say about my story:

"Snake Oil" - Matthew Baugh has been busy with stories in Arkham Tales,
High Seas Cthulhu (the excellent "Clownfish"), Hell's Hangmen and In
Lovecraft's Shadow issue #1. I wonder if Dave Mather, descendent of Cotton
Mather, will become a fixture in Mr. Baugh's stories? Dave Mather is a
deputy marshal in Nevada who gets mixed up in some mysterious goings on. As
you might surmise from the title, this is the Yiggiest story in the book.

(It's nice to be the Yiggiest)

One small correction. My story is set near Las Vegas, New Mexico. I think Mr. Carpenter (understandably) thought of Nevada when he saw the name.

Happy Dance!

My two contributor copies of HIGH SEAS CTHULHU came today! I'm so happy it's just obnoxious!

Hmm... looking at the blog I see it's 2 weeks already since my last post. (Mental note: must quit job to spend more time on line.)

The sad thing is I still don't know how to do some simple things here, like link to other blogs I like. Heck, I can't even get the blog to remember me. I always check "remember me" but it never does. (At any other time that might make me feel sad and lonely, but not on a contributor copy day!)

Huzzah!

Four into the Void

I've sent four more stories out into the outer reaches of internet publications. Several of them were rejected earlier and the (hopeful) improved versions are back into the fray.

"Fox Hunt" is away to the as-yet untitled ahthology that Cat Scratch Books is putting out. This is a gothic romance(!) with fantastic elements. In my case it's the story of a young woman who goes to live as the companion of an elderly woman in a secluded estate in the interior of Alaska. There are shape-shifting animals and people as well as connections to two other stories, "The Cold Comes South" and "Kumiho." It was very different for me for a number of reasons, not the least that it's 17,ooo words long which is almost twice anything i've done before. It was a fun exercise. I hope they like it.

"Trail of the Brujo" was recently rejected by Weird Tales but is now on the way to the anthology CROSS-GENRE CTHULHU. It's a Mysterious Dave western with a villain and a supporting character I particularly like. The editor is John Sunseri, who I know likes weird westerns. (He had a story in HELL'S HANGMEN.)

"Kumiho" is a horror offering based on Korean legends about a nine-tailed fox. I usually don't write straight horror. I tend to like adventure stories with fantastic elements much better. Good horror has an air of hopelessness and meaninglessness. That's what makes it so frightening. Unfortunately, I'm not much interested in hopelessness and meaninglessness. However, I have really enjoyed Asian fox tales for much of my life and enjoyed writing one. It's gone off to an anthology called LYCANTHROPE: THE BEAST WITHIN. They said they wanted lycanthropes other than werewolves so this may suit their needs. (What would you call a were-fox anyway? A vulpanthrope?)

Finally, "Horse Latitudes" is a high seas adventure featuring the same protaganist as "Clown Fish." It's a strange story that starts out like a high adventure then takes a strange turn through an unseen world. It was inspired by some beautiful stories by Lord Dunsany I read a while back. It's going to CLOCKWORK PHOENIX which is collecting stories that, "...stories that sidestep expectations in beautiful and unsettling ways."

"Horse Latitudes" is inspired by an old Jim Morrison poem about a part of the Atlantic where ships were often becalmed and horses were sometimes thrown overboard. That image has always stayed with me.

Avast!

I just heard that my story "Clown Fish" has officially made it into HIGH SEAS CTHULHU!

That be no bilge matey, arrr!

http://www.esp-books.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=221

In Lovecraft's Shadow

I just heard from Ron Shiflet that my story "Decently and Quietly Dead" will be included in vol 2 of his magazine, "In Lovecraft's Shadow." Ron's a great guy and a talented writer. His stories stories I've read are fast paced adventure with a nice dollop of horror and a touch of humor. They have the same appeal for me as Robert E. Howard stories but they're not at all imitation Howard.

Anyway, the story puts Mysterious Dave against (surprise) another Lovecraftean horror. It seems that "Hanging Judge" Isaac Parker (a real old west figure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Parker ) is upset because a criminal he had hanged has the gall to escape after the execution. Dave has to bring him back in the judge's words, '...decently and quietly dead.'

Cthulhu Frontiers

I just heard from William Jones that it's okay to mention that CTHULHU FRONTIERS is being released by Chaosium Press this month. (No link yet) This is a collection of horror in the grand tradition of H.P. Lovecraft set in the wild west. My story "Snake Oil" is going to be included in that and I'm very excited!

I've been writing weird westerns for a while now. Snake Oil will be the 4th story of Mysterious Dave Mather to see print. Dave was a historical gunfighter and a lawman in New Mexico and Kansas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysterious_Dave He was also a descendant of Cotton Mather, the Congregational minister famous for his involvement in the Salem Witch Trials. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather

I couldn't have created a character more perfect for this kind of story. He has come alive in my mind and I enjoy writing about him more than any other character.

The other thing I'm free to mention is that my story "Captain Future and the Lunar Peril" has been accepted in vol 4 of TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN which Black Coat Press will be putting out near the end of the year. It's my homage to the wonderful days of early SF when we knew very little about the solar system and anything was possible. As Douglas Adams said, "It was a time when men were real men, women were real women, and small furry creatures from Venus were real small furry creatures from Venus."