Thinking About What to Submit to RPLA This 2025

Just a quick note: This year the Florida Writers Association ended the Royal Palm Literary Awards for the non-fiction short/article/blog categories, so there goes most of my submission-worthy materials for consideration.

/headdesk

There are a couple of unpublished short stories I could submit along with one or two shorts I published in Funny Locations. But it feels really bleak that blog writing no longer counts for literary evaluation.

Of the published stories in Funny Locations, should I stick with "Road Trip To Vegas" or gamble on "...All Others Pay Cash"?

 

New Release: Funny Locations

Apologies for my distractions, but trying to get this uploaded to Amazon Publishing for both paperback and ebook release:

I hope you can see the UFO.
Book cover by M. A. Rehman
a cover artist available on Fiverr

I'll have the official publication date announced once it's confirmed, but the Kindle release is usually within a day.

Update: It's officially published! Amazon has the paperback and the Kindle ebook available for market!

This is a collection of stories ranging from revised / repaired versions released earlier in Last of the Grapefruit Wars (2004) alongside stories I've written and tried submitting in the years since. I have a personal favorite "Road Trip To Vegas" as the opening story - and the inspiration for the cover - all coming from the stories I consider "humor" and based on a diverse map of locales - from Las Vegas to Florida to Florida and Florida and also the Pacific Northwest and a little more Florida and Hong Kong and New Jersey and maybe a spot in Florida and New York City - to justify the book title. /grin

It doesn't include a particular ghost story which does have a road trip theme, because I'm still hoping to find another publication to see interest in it.

So this is how my year works out, people. Hopefully the readership out there will like the stories I tell.

Submitting to FWA 2022

Okay, I've done my ego some good submitting a number of works to the Florida Writers Association's annual Royal Palm Literary Awards!

I sent in five articles from my political blog for the Short Non-Fiction/Blogging category, hopefully this year I won't be toooooo partisan in my opinions.

I also submitted two flash fiction items I'd written this 2021, both of them were for a flash publication that were not accepted, but I feel good about them so I'm trying them with the RPLA. Update: Okay it turns out I did not pay attention to the rule changes. Last time I was told you could submit up to five entries per genre, but this year it's just five entries TOTAL. So I had to weed out the two flash fiction entries and eat the "No Refunds" consequences.

I also also submitted the FWA's annual anthology, this year themed "Thrills and Chills," and with luck it's funny enough - well, *I* like the punchline - to impress the judges this time around.

I'm thinking about submitting one more, longer short story that I've been toiling with for years, but I need to get it done soonest before the Early Bird submission costs go up.

KEEP WRITING, FELLOW WRITERS!

Here's hoping for good news by June/July...

Good News to Open 2022

It's nice to open a new year with news of getting published.

The Strangely Funny anthology accepted another humor horror short this week, a 21st Century take on vampires called "The Brides of WiFi."  It's in a different vein than the other vampire stories - "I Must Be Your First," "Minette Dances with the Golem of Albany," "How a Vampire Gets a Tan" - I've done for them, but that's allowed because there's so many different rules for how vampires work that you can change their behaviors and weaknesses from story to story and still find the logic to make it fit.

It's just, okay, there's no effing way that vampires sparkle. They don't. They never will.

I think the publication date is scheduled for some time in August, we'll see as the year progresses.

Gets me in the mood to see about other publications for short stories I can submit to. Yasssss queen.

Happy New Year, fellow writers!

Updates on Writing August 2021

1) Still have not heard from the FWA Royal Palm judges about my five submissions this year. They HAVE started sending out notifications to others who I see online crowing about getting Semi-Finalist status, so perhaps in another week or two...

2) I had submitted a work I've done a few years ago - "Road Trip to Vegas" - to an annual Mensa fiction issue (I am a member since 2001) and just heard back that I didn't make the final cut for that. They did have 130 submissions this year, which is really tough to compete against.

I may just end up putting "Road Trip" in with another story collection to self-publish. I am looking to cancel my deals with XLibris because those books never did sell well, I needed to update Last of the Grapefruit Wars to a better collection, and this may be my next big project for the month.

3) Mystery & Horror LLC is reopening submissions for the next Strangely Funny anthology. I have a funny premise and need to flesh it out. We'll see how it goes.

Getting Accepted for the Next Strangely Funny Anthology

Good news, people! A short story submission to the Strangely Funny anthology series has been accepted for 2021!

It's a 2020 story based on MURDER HORNETS. It might be the scariest story I've ever wrote.

LOOK AT THAT FACE!

The face of a Murder Hornet means business. And that business is MURDER. AAAAAAIIIEEEEEE.

Future updates on when and where the eighth anthology crops up are forthcoming.

You Know The Drill: 2021 Writing Projects

Above all, GET SOMETHING PUBLISHED!

Write

Write

Write!

Get a story submitted to the Florida Writers Association's annual anthology!

Get that damn NaNo novel finished!

Clean up your bookshelves!

Wait that's not writing, that's deflection.

Still, it's seven years of dust on that thing, GET IT CLEAN!

Sigh.

Writing Motivation for Short Stories

There are a few simple tricks:

1) Write something simple. A short story doesn't require a lot of details or characters or sweeping Big Ideas to captivate a reader. Just write, something with a beginning, an event, and an end.

2) Write something for your character. You may, in your lifetime, invent a person that you think is cool and/or witty and/or fun to be with. So, give that character a moment in time to be all that. Hopefully other people will read it and like your character too.

3) Write something that gets an idea from thought to paper. Don't let the idea stay bottled up in your head. Commit to paper. Read it with your own eyes, and find the language to make that idea flourish.

5) Stay consistent.

Something New With Camp Nano 2019

One of the things you could do with Camp NaNoWriMo for April/July was setting your own word goal, so that you won't stress out trying to get 50,000 words done in 30 days like you do in November.

But I noticed something new when I tried to select my Goals for the July camp: It now included options on selecting other means of measuring your efforts.

• Words
• Hours
• Minutes
• Lines
• Paragraphs

One thing I kept running into with my last handful of failed projects was finding the time to get writing done. The word count was one thing: trying to cram in 1600-plus words per day wasn't happening, and the more I fell back the harder it was to keep up.

I'm going to see if going by HOURS - say, 40 hours for the month of July - will get me to my goals better. If time is my limiter, use that as an advantage.

So I'm planning on 40 hours worth of writing this July: Getting science fiction stories finished up to complete an anthology of sci-fi shorts.

Wish me luck.

Strangely Funny VI NOW IN PRINT and On My Bed

The publishers shipped the print copy for me, just got it today!

My short story "How a Vampire Gets a Tan," continuing the ongoing struggles of my heroine from "Minette Dances With the Golem of Albany," (in SFIII) is on page 121.

If you purchase a copy from Amazon.com, I encourage you to READ. INDULGE. DESTROY! And then leave a nice review on Amazon 'cause we're polite like that.

Writing Out of My Blues

I am struggling to find the time and the motivation to write.

That's all I can say at the moment.

In the Good News Category Regarding the 2019 FWA Royal Palm Awards

While one story did not fare so hot, another story did!

CONGRATULATIONS! Your entry, The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow, Short Story, is a semifinalist for the 2019 Royal Palm Literary Awards competition!

This was done under the category of Published Short, thanks to it being in the anthology Strangely Funny V!

You know, this book! Still available on Amazon!

So yay! If it was good enough for Strangely Funny, it's good enough for the state of Florida!

The thing is, there's still a Finalist stage to contend for, and then finding out if the story achieves top status as a Winner (First, Second, or Third Place). So there's still a few more nerve-wracking months until we get there.

In the meanwhile, I get to display this!

In the Sad News Category Regarding the 2019 FWA Royal Palm Awards

Well, I just got back word that "Road Trip to Vegas" - my submission to the Short Fiction Unpublished category for the Florida Writers Association's Royal Palm Awards - did not make the Semifinalist cut for consideration.

'Tis a pity. I hoped it would have been funny enough and good enough to pass muster.

Maybe I didn't have enough Fourth-Wall-Breaking narration in it. Yeah, that's the problem. MORE INSANE NARRATIVE DIALOGUE COMING RIGHT UP!

/owstophittingme

Look, "Road Trip to Vegas" is kind of a personal work for me, based on one of the traumatic moments of my teen years undertaking a non-stop road trip that left some emotional scars. I wrote TWO stories based on that trip, the other one being "A Face In the Light" which interestingly enough earned a Finalist status in this same category last year (I am trying to find a publisher to submit it, so far I've had a couple of rejections so... sigh...).

I still think it's one of my better works. I'm sorely tempted to package it together with other humor stories and self-publish another story anthology. I just need to get about eight or ten more stories - I have six already, maybe seven if I pull some e-published works off-market to put it together - to justify a decent-sized book.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for some GOOD news... (wait for the next blog post)

Coming Soon: Strangely Funny VI

I am proud to announce a new humor-horror anthology is coming out this year, the next installment of Strangely Funny (this one is the seventh but it's numbered Sixth, we'll explain later)!

The editors forwarded the book cover, see below:

The story they accepted is "How a Vampire Gets A Tan," a sequel of sorts to the "Minette Dances With the Golem of Albany" published in Volume III. If anybody enjoyed reading that and the other Dhampyr story "I Must Be Your First," I hope you enjoy this follow-up as well.

I'll let you know when the book is available online for print and eReader!

Plan For 2019 As a Writer

One of my priorities is submitting "A Face In the Light" to any publisher willing to accept it. Gwendolyn Kiste, bless her, gave me a suggested magazine to try at the beginning of January!

In terms of other projects, I'm keen on completing the NaNo novel this past year and getting it submitted through IngramSpark (ah, more on that later) which has a deal through NaNo worth checking out.

Otherwise, I need to keep writing. One idea, hopefully not too stressful, is to write a short story once a week. Since stories and not novels are my forte, play to my strengths. There's a ton of Talents 'verse stories I *should* get done (superhero ideas in my head since the 2000s).

One last thing is to see about reclaiming an old domain name I had (I dunno if I ever linked it through this blog before). It's already proving a hard project: even though it's been abandoned, it hasn't been picked up and any attempt to repurchase it is blocked. I need to check with the original domain provider about getting it back...

Writing Update Again: FWA Royal Palm Awards FINALIST Status

You read that right, kiddos. I got bumped up from Semi-Finalist Status to FINALIST Status!

That means "A Face In the Light" is in the TOP THREE submissions to the Short Fiction category for the RPLA this year!  it wasn't in the Top Three after all.

I even get a new GIF to show off. Why did they bother sending me this GIF?

Insert Snoopy Happy Dance as well!

No. No dancing.

Writing Update: FWA Royal Palm Awards

As a member of the Florida Writers Association, I am able to submit works to an annual competition for the Royal Palm Literary Awards. They have a category for Short Fiction (it does not break down by specific genre from there, alas), and I had an unpublished work "A Face In the Light" that I put in to see how it would do (critique/feedback is part of the review process). It's a personal story, it's one I think can be a good one if I can get the kinks ironed out.

I just received word from the judges that I reached the Semi-Finalist stage of the Awards.

Squee!

I'm not sure how many other stories I was competing against, and there is still no guarantee I will win outright. But getting THIS far in the competition is great news. It means that the story has enough style and oomph to win readers. It means I might actually be doing this writing thing right.

The finalists will be announced at the Annual Conference this October, so we will see then how I fare against the other good stories.

This is an unbelievably good way to brighten one's mood.

OFFICIAL: Strangely Funny V Now Available IN PRINT

The news is out, and so is the sixth volume of Strangely Funny Volume 5.

...

Yeah, and it's supposed to be a trilogy OW stop hitting me.

Best way to find it is on Amazon right now, follow this link here to get to it. The eBook version for Kindle is here too!

You can purchase a copy, but I would suggest holding off on that because as soon as I am able I hope to offer a FREE autographed copy giveaway event to promote this! PLEASE STAY TUNED!

If you don't wanna wait, please do buy a copy and I hope you enjoy my story "The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow." If you do purchase, kindly leave a review for the book please and thanks.

Writing Motivations: Finding Something Consistent To Do

I think one of the things I look for in a writing project is a deadline, the idea that I have a goal to reach as much as I have a story to tell. I've got ideas - there's about five plots I've got bouncing around in would-be novel formats, there's eight Talents (superhero) stories on the backburner off the top of my head, just came up with a plot idea two weeks ago I haven't even fleshed out yet - but without a deadline or sense of urgency those stories just, well, sit there.

One thing that's been mentioned before and something I've finally taken a look at is this site Wattpad. It's a self-publishing submission site for storytelling, covering not only fanfiction but also original fiction. It tracks online readers so you can get an idea how many people are reading - and liking - your stories. You can publish in a serial format, meaning you can do a novel chapter-by-chapter. I'm not entirely certain of the copyright rules - if you want to pull the online work so you can go publish it as a print novel - but I think it favors the writer being able to control their ownership of work.

My Camp NaNo project may not necessarily fit this serialized format... but one of my other science fiction story ideas might.

I'm going to trying this out this month of May, see how it goes.

Submission time! Yay!

So again, I'm rushing up to the deadline for submissions, but hey I got this in this morning!

I submitted a short story "Knowing Dragons" to Darkhouse Books for their planned Shhh Murder anthology. I spotted it on a listing of online submissions - thank you, Gwendolyn Kiste! - and while it's in a genre - cozy mystery - I'm not usually working in, I noticed it was perfect for me in one regards.

The editors were going to give extra credit to anyone with a librarian background.

So, here's hoping the story passes muster!