Mysterious Dave Rides Again

Hopefully...

A few years I wrote something for a project Ron Shiflet was working on. Sadly, the project seems to have folded and I haven't been able to get ahold of Ron. I hope he's well. He's a talented writer and a heck of a nice guy.

Anyway, I put the story, "Decently and Quietly Dead" into my metaphorical trunk for a bit on the chance an opportunity would throw itself at me. This weekend it did.

My friend Win Scott Eckert sent me an email introducing me to Laura Givens who is working on an anthology called SIX GUNS STRAIGHT FROM HELL for Science Fiction Trails Publishing. I think it'll be a great fit, but am keeping my fingers crossed until I see if they agree.

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

News, because it's been too long

My New Year's resolution was at least one post a month on my blogs. So far, I need a little work to catch up :p

Anyway, I don't think I posted this before, but my story "Trail of the Brujo" was accepted for Library of the Living Dead Press's upcoming anthology, "Tales from the Cauldron" edited by Rhiannon Frater.

I'm particularly excited about this one because it will also include stories from two very talented fellow members of the PIT writing workshop: Anna Haney and Victorya.

My story is one of gunfighter Mysterious Dave Mather and dark magic in 1880's Dallas.

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

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.

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.

Crushed Again

My story "Trail of the Brujo" was just rejected by "Weird Tales." That's discouraging of course, it's a story I felt rather proud of and this is two rejections. I wonder how I'll go on.

I console myself however with the fact that I'm being turned down by such an impressive market.

More Submissions

I've been submitting mostly to anthologies to date and haven't cracked the professional magazine market. I recently sent "Trail of the Brujo" (Mysterious Dave again) to Weird Tales http://www.ralan.com/sfpro/listings/weirdtales.htm so I've got my fingers crossed. It's a revival of the great Weird Tales of the pulp era that gave people like Robert E. Howard, Seabury Quinn, and H.P. Lovecraft their start in writing. It would be a thrill to be published under that title.

I'm revising "Yasuke," which is my stab at old fashioned space opera, to sent to Intergalactic Medicine show http://www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com/cgi-bin/mag.cgi?do=content&article=submissions. It's a long story (9,000 + words) that was accepted to an anthology called "The Big Black II." Unfortunately that anthology went away when Rage Machine books folded.

There's a story a wrote a while back called "Horse Latitudes" inspired by the Jim Morrison poem. It's starts as an adventure story but moved to something unearthly and dreamlike. (I haven't done that before. I hope it comes across the way I want it to. There's a new anthology called Clockwork Phoenix http://www.clockworkphoenix.com/ this might be good for so I'll be polishing it for that.

Submitting stories is getting easier but I still have a big hollow feeling in my story every time i do it.

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.'