Unabashed

I read somewhere that 75% of blog visitors bounce away from the site within the first 30 seconds of arrival. For me, that stat is higher (this graph is for the month of April):

Wish I knew why. But at the same time I have around 10% who stay for longer than 15 minutes. To those of you who fall into that category, and who keep coming back: thanks. I like you. Overall, traffic was down from March to April. March was a monster month for Unabashed, raking in almost 300 individual users per day (86% of whom bounced without even settling for a full minute). For April, it was down to 196 (but 513 page views, so somebody’s sticking around). No, I don’t know why, but then I can’t explain why I get the number of visitors I do, either. They just started trickling in, and slowly but surely became what they are now.

So, if I was the CEO of a corporation, I’d be chewing the asses off my sales staff, telling the company to get a handle on churn, and I’d be trying to come up with a new pricing scheme and marketing campaign to get the ship righted. But then I’d be making $12.8 million per year, too. But… I’m just me, tapping out 8.6 posts per week and I don’t have a marketing campaign or sales staff, and I think it’s safe to say that any sort of pricing scheme above $0.00 would drive churn up to right around 100%. But I do have churn. 85.6% in the red. Ah, well, thank God I have my day job.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, churn, individual, Matt Mitchell, stats, traffic, Unabashed, unique, visitors

Interesting note, today I uploaded the picture of the Aurora Borealis to my Flickr account, and then made a post on the blog about it. As it ends up, that was my 200th picture uploaded into Flickr, and my 200th post on Unabashed, which is kind of freaky. As milestones, the Flickr one is dubious, because I only have a free account, and the free accounts are restricted to 200 pictures. So now my earliest pictures will not be visible unless I go through and delete some (since only the most recent 200 are viewable). Frankly, I didn’t know I was close to 200 pics. But 200 blog posts is significant: It was a goal for me to reach 200 pages of content with this blog. Some of the content is good, some bad, some popular, and some has never even been seen before that I know of. 

Now that I’ve reached my 200-post goal, I’m beginning to think long-term. This isn’t a money-making scheme. I don’t post advertisements and I don’t use Adsense. This is just a repository for things I find interesting, ruminations and a log of my path as a new writer. Links to sites I like, other blogs I read, stories I’ve written and/or other projects I’m working on. The only thing I had in mind when I started it, and that I maintain still today, is that I don’t want to give repetitious posts of content that’s already been covered by Boing Boing. I didn’t want to be a carbon copy of other writers who blog, and I didn’t want to post a lot of personal stuff. In those respects, I feel like I’m still right on target. For the future, I expect I’ll be building on what I’ve already done, but writing more ruminations, some longer articles. I don’t see myself posting any more or less than I do now, but I do see my word count increasing because I’m getting better at looking deeper into an idea that I was when I first started out. And I hope to be writing a lot more success stories in the publishing arena that I have in the past.

I hope you’ve been entertained, and I hope I’ll be able to entertain you further as the blog grows. Be seeing you.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, blogger, Flickr, Matt Mitchell, Unabashed, writer

This article is written by guest poster Haiman Caine, who promises to start giving us a column every now and then. He’s sometimes called Hurricane, so we’re going to call his column “Hurricane Alley.”

Friday night was slow in the bar where I work. This guy–tall and lean, with a western shirt (the kind with snaps instead of buttons) and a big belt buckle over his 28-inch waist–came in and asked me if I wanted to fight a beaver. A beaver. It was not the best way to make my acquaintance, though. I know a lot of animals that I like a lot more than most of the people I meet. Call it a soft spot, whatever, I just know that right then I really wanted to knock him on his ass. But I’m also the bouncer, which gave me a little bit of a conflict to work through on the fly: As much as I wanted to hit him, it’s my job to keep the bar cool. So, rather than feed the guy his teeth right then and there, I gave him a little time so I could see the animal for myself. If it looked malnourished or mangy or abused in any way, this guy was going to wish he’d never met me.

I know that people sometimes “wrestle” bears and alligators. Because there are ways to approach some animals and, also, ways to drug them into a stupor. And a bear is big, too. Big enough to not freak out if a man-sized animal comes into its vicinity (although sometimes they will any way). Big animals sometimes have a temperament that can allow them to be tamed, but a beaver? A beaver is small enough to feel threatened by a man-sized animal. It might look all sweet and calm out there swimming around or gnawing on a tree, but there are animals that you just don’t mess with. Wolverines, for instance. And, though you might not believe it, beavers. Put it this way: a beaver can chew through wood, and they can whack that tail with a lot of force. These were some of my first thoughts, before the guy started up again.

“I’ve got a beaver man outside. He fights on the weekends–” at this point I interrupted him.

“Wait a minute: a beaver man?”

“Yup. He’s half beaver, half man.”

“And he fights?” I asked.

The guy shrugged. “For money.”

I just nodded, trying to take in what I was being told. One thing I knew was that I did not want to fight a man dressed up like a beaver. Not at all. Nope. What do they call those people, furries? Gives me the heebs. “What’s your name, mister?”

“Roy,” he said, and went on. “We travel all over the Florida looking for tough guys. From what we hear, you’re one of the toughest. Hurricane, they call you.”

I get this a lot. Most people who know of me will tell you that I’m always looking for a fight; but the people who know me know that I hate to fight, that fighting always drops my spirits. Before I became a bouncer, I never got into fights (excluding a stint in the military where fighting was my job). For some reason, though, people hear about me and they want to challenge me. It’s not a reputation I’m proud of, and it happens more often than I’d like to admit.

“I don’t fight for money, Roy, and I don’t fight for fun.” I said this, as grim as I could manage, but I knew how things were about to go. When someone wants to fight, they provoke. They’ll do anything they can to make you as mad as they can. The best thing I could do was walk away, but then the conflict reared up again. First, that I needed to escort this guy right back through the door, and second: how often do you get the chance to see a beaver man? One thing was for certain: he wasn’t going to get me to fight him unless he walked right up and hit me (or hit a customer in the bar).

Roy pulled out one of those Southern LINC walkie-talkie phones and said, “He don’t want to fight, Burt.”

Burt, I thought. Really.

Next thing I know in walks this little guy, maybe three and a half feet tall. He might have been a midget or a dwarf, I don’t know much about little people. But he was covered with this dark brown, coarse fur. He had a tail and he even had the big front teeth. Huge front teeth, in fact. He had a big, fat cigar stuffed into the side of his mouth, a big round gut, and all he was wearin was a pair of really short Levis, cuffed up at the bottom, and cut with a tail hole. All I could really do was cock my head and stare; much as I hate to stare at folks, he was a damn curious fellow.

The little guy walked right up to me. Stomped up to me, in fact, and there was no doubting his intentions: he was fixing for a fight. A little tongue flicked out and licked his big front teeth. He smacked his cheeks and his tail rose up about a foot and thumped back onto the floor with a Whomp! that was loud enough to grab the attentions of all seven or eight people in the bar.

I didn’t know what to do, really. It wasn’t like I could just walk away: what if he picked a fight with someone else? I’d end up fighting him anyway, just to get him out the door. Most of the folks in the bar milled over nearer, trying to get a glimpse of the little beaver man, who snorted, walked over to the bar and bit off the wooden leg of a bar stool. The stool crashed to the floor, and there he was, smacking that stool’s leg against his palm like a club, a mischievous grin behind his overgrown, rust-colored teeth (I’ve found out since that, while most animals use calcium to coat their teeth, beavers use iron, giving the teeth a red coloring). Possibly most disturbing of all were the beady little black eyes. He had hardly any white at all, just pupil. I figured they were contacts or something.

“You guys are gonna have to pay for that,” I said, pointing at the stool.

“Aren’t you supposed to be a tough guy?” the beaver man asked. His voice was gravelly, too deep to belong to someone that small.

“I’m just a bouncer here, mister. I don’t fight, I politely show people the exit if they start a ruckus.” I lowered my head and narrowed my eyes and added, “As polite as I can.”

He smirked a little at that, and his eyes narrowed, too. This was the moment when it would either happen, or it wouldn’t. I didn’t want it to happen. I said, “Let me buy you a beer instead.”

He snorted again, looked left and right, dropped the stool leg and climbed up onto a barstool. I motioned for Jorge to line us up, and he did.

“Mind if I ask you something?” I asked.

He had the long neck stuck into the corner of his mouth. “Shoot,” he gurgled (it sounded like “thoot“), still drinking. I looked over my shoulder but Roy was gone.

“This is a pretty convincing getup. I mean…”

He put his beer down, wiped his mouth on his furry little arm and said, “Ain’t no getup. I’m the beaver man.” He burped and started drinking again, motioning for Jorge to bring him another.

“Yeah, but…” I scratched my head.

He set the empty bottle down on the bar and reached for the fresh longneck. Before he took a drink, he sighed and said, “Doctors at Tallahassee say it’s a faulty genetic imprint. Something went mishmash with the wiring when my old man shot his load. They said I’m the only human being in the world with a tail.” He took a sip of the beer, put it back down and said, “I’m not the only one with fur, though. And I’m not the only one with iron enamel teeth. But mine are bigger.” He gave me a wily smile and a wink of one beady eye and started chugging away again.

“I guess I thought you’d had some drastic body mods.”

“Uh-uh. All natural.”

As it ended up, I kind of had to fight him anyway. Seems little people, even little beaver men, can’t handle their liquor very well. I say “kind of” because it wasn’t really a fight. He was so drunk I just had to drag him to the door. Roy was leaning on their ‘78 model Cadillac with a cowboy hat on his head. He opened one of the rear doors and I helped push Burt in. He was snoring when we closed the door.

“I knew it’d go like that,” Roy said. “Once he gets to drinking… he can be a pill.”

I nodded. I know a lot of folks like that. I’m like that, sometimes.

I told Roy good night and they drove away. I hate that I didn’t get a picture with the little beaver man, but maybe he’ll be back. Next time I’ll give him a shot at the title, while he’s sober, so long as he promises not to bite.

–Hurricane, 3-16-08

Read more of the adventures of Haiman and his cohorts at the Innerarity blog.

written by Hurricane \\ tags: beaver, beaver man, Haiman Caine, Matt Mitchell

Okay, all my archives are finally in place, so past articles are available for your reading pleasure again (if you’re into that sort of thing). But–for some reason I lost some formatting in the transition, along with a few images. I’ve got 186 articles on this blog now, and I’ll start working through them gradually, fixing the formatting errors (they’ll still read, but, for example, apostrophes are now little weird blocks).

Unabashed is healthier than I thought it was, too, which is very encouraging. When I suffered the massive format failure when I was with Yahoo! Hosting, my Google Analytics stats dropped–in one day–from roughly 40 unique visitors (UVs) per day to 1. Yes: 1. Some days there were less than one–that being a big, fat, donut hole–and very rarely did they ever creep above the 1. I had no idea why it happened that way, but it continued even after I’d made the switch to Surpass Hosting, and I’ve really started trying to figure out why lately. Primarily because I know personally of at least ten folks per day who were looking at my blog. The stats just weren’t accurate. But along with switching to Surpass I gained a new stats analysis tool which was showing roughly the same results, and at that point I began thinking that I really must suck, that people hate me, and that I should pull the plug on the whole thing.

But (again, another but) then last night, just for giggles, I checked the stats for my root domain: mattmitchellfiction.com, without the subdomain /unabashed, and there I found all my missing little UVs. And even better, since my move to Surpass, my visits have increased. Since March 1st I’ve had 1749 UVs hitting 2264 pages. That’s a record around here. True, they’re not Scalzi numbers (whose are? Not many), but they’re respectable enough for me to be entirely content that at least I don’t suck, and pulling the plug might not be altogether necessary. Some of the traffic has come from Down in the Cellar, where my latest story has been published, but a lot of it just comes through Google and Yahoo! searches. For some reason a lot of people end up at my “Miraculous Coffee Entry.” I guess there are a lot of coffee lovers out there.

So, in response to this, and seeing that a lot more traffic comes through my root domain than I had previously supposed, I’ve revamped my front page with my little mascot friend “Viva the Beaver,” who I drew up about ten years ago. (He’s the little guy with the harpoon peeking out of the right hand column now). It’s not a very professional job, but it’s all I had in me to do last night, and, most importantly, it links to here, where the bulk of my ruminations reside. Check it out and let me know what you think, I would appreciate the feedback, whether good or bad.

So the state of the blog is good. Better than it’s ever been, really. And there are developments coming down the pipe that I hope you’ll enjoy.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blog, Matt Mitchell, stats, Unabashed

John Scalzi’s idea, but I like it so I’m putting it to use here. Is this a meme? Maybe. I don’t usually do memes but this one seemed fun.

1. Scaled the exterior surface of a 1735′ radio tower. To the top. Really (pic at right is at 1100′ level). (I’ve been to the top of a 2000′ tower, but it was via an elevator. Still.)
2. Captained a sailboat and sailed with my wife in the Caribbean sea. This would have been much more interesting if I’d have had a run-in with the Pirates of the Caribbean, but, alas, no pirates. (Before that I was in the Navy and sailed (if you can call it sailing when you’re on an aircraft carrier with 5k other “sailors”) throughout the Mediterranean Sea, Atlantic Ocean, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean, Arctic Sea and Red Sea.)
3. Read the entire Patrick O’brian canon.
4. Jumped out of a perfectly good airplane.
5. Ate the still-palpitating heart of a diamondback rattlesnake and wrote a story about it.
6. Went horseback riding in the Carmel Mountains in Israel.
7. Had a dinner cruise on the Nile and the next day visited the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Entered the tomb of a long-dead king. Was suitably fascinated.
8. Caught, grilled, and ate 8 lobsters in Key West, just off Boca Chica Key, while Hurricane Andrew loomed over the horizon.
9. Enlisted in the Navy because of a song.
10. Heard the voice of my dead friend warning me of danger. Twice.

The really sad part of this is that all of this happened at least ten years ago (except numbers 2 & 3). A steady job, marriage and kids have considerably slowed the part-time adventurer lifestyle I was once accustomed to living. And though I know most of you have children as well (which makes that adventure one that can’t be included on this list) I maintain that parenthood is so far the greatest adventure of my life. Besides, once these little ones grow up a bit more, I’ve already got more than a few adventures planned out for us…

Now; feel free to add your own list.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Matt Mitchell

My book is written. Well, it’s actually my third book, but the first one is not good and neither is the second, although with the second I believe its a good story, it just needs major rewrites. So, anyway, the book is done. It’s called Modern-Day Mythica, it’s around 120k words, and the premise is this:

200,000 years ago, Earth’s second moon disappeared. The rest of the story is about the effects of that missing satellite on one Joe Copeland, modern-day regular guy. Oh, and the moon that disappeared was an enormous, black, magical energy-generating rock that was inhabited by dragons.

Once every blue moon (heh, it was actually a black moon) dragons could travel to Earth (the details on how they did this are worked out, but I won’t get into here right now) and basically terrorize everything that lived–including humans. But then this really old guy shows up and makes the black moon disappear. Of course, since the black moon was the magic generator and this old guy had been using magic to keep himself alive far beyond a normal life span, he died. And the dragons, who depended on magic for flight, fire-breathing, communication–basically everything that separated them from big, crawling lizards–were all killed off. At least the ones on Earth were. The ones still on the moon–now banished to a different reality altogether–were mighty pissed, and began working on a way to get the moon back into orbit.

They never figured it out, but they did find a way to open a portal, a rift, between the realities, and they sent one dragon back to see if they could figure out a way to get the moon back into orbit from here. Joe, of course, is the guy who’s supposed to stop this from happening.

The story, which I’ve tentatively entitled Modern-Day Mythica, incorporates a good deal more than just dragons in its mythos: there are werewolves, ghosts, magicians, an alligator that turns into a motorcycle, etc.

Now, as you may know, I’ve been populating a wiki over at Wetpaint.com with details of the mythos involved. It’s not complete yet, but there is a lot of detail already there. Whether this book ever sees the light of day or not I have no idea, but I’m hoping that if this blog can build a little following, gain a few more readers (this is Unabashed honesty for ya, folks–yes, I’m using you, but I sincerely love you, too), that, coupled with the already-built companion wiki might make an editor give me at least a second glance before he/she shoves me into the trash can and sends me the dreadful form letter rejection.

Here’s an excerpt, if you’re interested (disclaimer: This is gory).

Edgar Billies had owned the Duck ‘n’ Dolphin for twelve years when the stranger came through the door. The fellow looked ordinary enough, about six two, brownish blond hair, dark green eyes. He was dressed kind of funny, his clothes didn’t seem to fit, and he was barefoot, wet, and dirty. He was wearing a fag bag that actually said “FAG BAG” on the front of it. That didn’t speak well for folks in Ed’s mind. But then Ed thought the guy might be homeless. He almost threw him out on the spot but decided against it if the guy didn’t have any money, then he’d throw him out. But the guy just didn’t seem like a homeless person; he carried himself upright and proud, like a damn king or something. And he was smiling, like he was just coming in to shake everyone’s hand and get a vote. The rest of the guys, Dan, Bull, Todd, and Legs, all turned to look at him, but they didn’t pay him any mind. Edgar poured up a beer for Legs and asked the stranger what he could get for him.

“How about some whiskey,” the guy said, sitting down at one of the front tables.

The guy kicked his dirty feet up on the table. Before Edgar took him the whiskey he hollered, “Fellah, you wanna get your feet off the table?”

The men at the bar looked at the stranger, and the stranger complied with a wink. He was still smiling.

Edgar set the drink on the table and said, “That’ll be six fifty.” He’d jacked the price up special for this joker.

The stranger reached out to take the drink and Edgar, in his classic way, grabbed at the stranger’s wrist to tell him to pay up first. Only the stranger caught Edgar’s wrist instead, and the next thing Edgar knew his arm was twisted up behind his back painfully and the stranger downed the shot. The four men at the bar hopped to their feet.

The stranger threw the shot glass and hit Bull in the forehead, which just served to piss Bull off, and all four of them were an inch away from charging straight in and kicking the shit out of the monkey that was holding Ed’s arm. They backed off a step when they heard Ed’s arm crack, though. Then, through his grin that never wavered, the stranger jerked Ed’s arm straight up over his head, then kicked him toward the others. The arm was broken and out of socket and it flopped around like an empty shirt sleeve when he fell forward and cracked his head on the bar. Todd tried to catch him, but Edgar was too fat and went into the bar anyway, then he hit the floor like a rotten log.

Dan and Bull charged with a loud, human growl coming from each of them. But the stranger picked up the chair he’d been sitting on and right before their eyes it changed into a two-handed ax. The handle and head were both deep, dark green, metal or stone, they couldn’t tell, the color and texture were otherworldly, precious, like a rare, gigantic gem, something you’d actually want your head cut off with if it came to that, like something an archeologist would pull from a horde of treasure in a tomb in China that was as old as mankind itself. The head of the ax was inlaid with delicate lines of engraving, as fine as spider’s silk, which curled and swept like waves back from the sharpened edge. Near that edge, the head of the ax, the color of dark, luxurious jade, became paler and paler until it was almost white at the sharpened edge. It looked like it would be hot to the touch. Amazed though they were, they were already committed, and men like Dan and Bull commit to things only as a final option. The final option had been crossed when this faggot had come in here and broke Ed’s arm, as far as they were concerned. But the stranger brought the ax back with both hands and swung it hard and full, right through Bull’s left knee and into Dan’s right shin. Both big men fell in opposite directions, screaming. The stranger never stopped smiling, though; he drew up the ax like he was splitting wood and began making kindling out of Bull’s left arm. Then he turned on Dan, who was trying to get to his feet, and planted that ax right on his collar, between his neck and his shoulder. It sheered clean through the collarbone and into his breast, and Dan looked down at it with wonder as a stream of crimson blood shot up into his nostrils from his own chest wound.

Todd ran around to the other side of the bar and ran along the bar bent over, trying to find Ed’s shotgun. When he saw it he laid his hands on it, but then he felt an odd pain in his lower back and from that moment on, all he knew was that he was on his back, conscious, but unable to move anything but his eyes. He couldn’t talk, lick his lips, wiggle his toes or anything. He figured that when he bent over to get the shotgun the stranger whacked him with that ax right at the base of his spine and he was right. Gregg had sheared his lower spinal column cleanly in two, and then he left Todd to lay and think about what was coming next, as he set about chopping Dead Ed into edible-sized bites.

Todd heard every plunge of the ax; he heard Ed moan when the ax went into him, sounding like a softball hitting a catcher’s mitt in fast-pitch, or like a sack of flour when dropped onto a wooden floor. Todd heard every blow, and with mounting terror, knew his time was soon to come. Maybe he’ll forget about me, he thought, or maybe he’ll just not worry about me any more, seeing as how I’m incapacitated any way. He began to wonder if doctors could reattach a severed spine, or if he would have to spend the rest of his life unable to move, flinch or even blink his eyes. But then the stranger looked over the bar and Todd knew that he wasn’t going to be left alive. Tears began to flow from his eyes.

The stranger’s head was covered with bright red gore. Thick droplets were spattering down onto the bar Todd could see them almost as if in slow motion. The stranger spit and bloody spittle spattered the wall beside Todd. He walked slowly down to the end of the bar and then walked up to Todd, the ax up on his shoulder. He was standing over Todd’s feet, a bloody, gory mess from head to toe. And he was smiling; grinning like a maniac. He set the ax head on the floor and spit in both his hands, rubbed them together, and then hoisted the ax with both hands, bringing it back over his shoulder big smile still in place and then he brought it down in a swift, singing arc. Todd heard his thigh crunch and the ax struck the hardwood floor beneath it, pinning the leg down. The stranger had to pry the ax free, shifting the handle up and down to wrench it out of the wood floor and Todd’s leg. There was a sucking sound as the ax head finally came free of the leg. Todd’s eyes were running with tears he wasn’t feeling the pain of the blows, not exactly; he could feel each blow like a thud like when a dentist pulls a tooth when the jaw is full of novacane but there was no sharp pain as there should have been, only the bone-jarring thud that caused his vision to blur for a second and his head to rock from side to side slightly. All the worse, because without the pain to tell his mind to shut down he had to endure every swing of that ax, every sucking sound as it pulled free of every wound it inflicted, and he had to watch every time the stranger wrenched the ax free of the floor, with each thunderous blow. When the stranger cut off his left arm at the shoulder, Todd could hear the ax whistle by his ear, and he began to grow cold. When the stranger cut off his right arm at the elbow, and his stump flew up in front of his eyes, spattering blood across his face, his hearing went out and he could no longer hear the meaty thwacks of his dismemberment. When the stranger finally struck him in the belly, Todd saw a jet of blood spray up into the stranger’s face, right before his eyesight faded slowly to gray, and then he was blind. All he had left at that point was the feeling of each blow rocking his body, as if he was underwater and someone was swatting the surface above his head with a boat paddle. He could feel the reverberations, he could feel the thud, and in his mind he could hear the dull thump, but it was distant, echoing, and then he was gone.

As Gregg walked out of the Duck ‘n’ Dolphin Saloon, there was a chair extending from the chest cavity of the owner, Edgar Billies, as if it had just sprouted and grown there.

End exerpt.

So what do ya think? Do you like it (and are you willing to spread the good word about Unabashed so I can gain fame and fortune :-)? Or do you hate it and think my plan will fail and I’ll suffer the pain of self-publishing?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: book, excerpt, Fiction, Matt Mitchell, sample, story, writing

I finished my submission packet today. I’m sending my novel “Modern-Day Mythica” to Tor in the hopes that it’ll be that one of ten thousand Tor accepts. Is it good enough? Who knows. The friends and relations who’ve read it thought it was good, or at least they were nice enough to tell me it was. I have a certain degree of confirmation, at least, that my writing does not suck, as evidenced by the recent acceptances of short stories I’ve written for publication. I have no idea how much sway that might lend to their decision, if any, but it’s got to be better than having no publishing credits at all. The publishing credits I do have are via paid markets, but not professional-level, so, again, I have no idea. The only thing I know is that Tor accepts unagented submissions and the kinds of work they publish suit me and my writing.

So the great wait begins. Tor gives a timeframe of 4 - 6 months before they’ll let you know, so I can sit on this manuscript that long to see if I have mud in my eye or if I’m golden. At that point, if it’s unsuccessful, I may just opt to self publish it through CreateSpace or serialize it here on my website. If successful, let the celebration begin.

This is me waiting:

This is me if they accept it:

And now that I’ve fully embarrassed myself, I bid you adieu.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Matt Mitchell, publishing

Goals are very important. I believe that, and I’ve lived a lot of my life in pursuit of goals that I’ve set for myself. For the past few years, when it comes to writing, my single goal has been, simply, to get published. Well, this grand summer of 2007 that goal finally came to fruition. I have received affirmation (”Hey! Your writing doesn’t suck!”) not only once, but three times within six months. So what’s next?

Well, for starters, I really want to be published in Chiaroscuro. Not only do they pay a lot better for shorts than most markets, but they’re also an SFWA market, meaning a publication through them would move me one step closer to applying for and receiving membership into that elite society. Also, take a look at their guidelines. A lot of publications will make a vain attempt to reduce the size of their slush piles by incorporating a huge set of rules and bylaws to follow for submitters. I can’t imagine this tactic actually works, because a slush pile is what it is, and if the material is unacceptable then that’s just what it is. By complicating the submission process, forcing me to rewrite my story (for the twenty-sixth time) just to remove paragraph indents and add a line between paragraphs and remove formatting such as italics and add those little _italics specifying lines_ it just makes the writer more frustrated. Don’t get me wrong, I do adhere religiously to those guidelines when submitting, but that doesn’t make it any less of a hassle. Chiaroscuro’s guidelines are refreshingly simple. In case you haven’t seen them and don’t want to click over there, here they are:

• Dark.
• Well-written.
• 4,000 words or less.
• Rich Text Format (.rtf) or Microsoft Word (.doc) attachments.
• No reprints.
• A simultaneous submission is okay, as long as you tell us it’s simultaneous.
• No multiple submissions.
• Be sure to write your name and the story’s title in the Subject line of the email.

That’s it. Simplicity at its finest. Bravo Mr. Editor (Brett Alexander Savory, if you’re interested). But the most important reason I want to be published in Chiaroscuro is because I like the fiction they publish. I read the magazine regularly on my Palm TX. There are others that I like a lot too (Down in the Cellar is great also, and is publishing a story of mine in May, The Ghost of Tom Johns, but it is sadly not a SFWA-qualifying professional market), but Chiaroscuro is my favorite right now, so if they do accept a story of mine it would be transcendent.
So my short term goals are:

1. To be published by Chiaroscuro
2. To have three SFWA-qualifying professional markets accept material from me.
3. To gain admittance to the SFWA.
4. To get my novel published, therefore launching my novel-writing career.

And once that career begins rolling, what next? Well, I’m not foolish enough to believe I’m the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, I would just like to have a small, dedicated readership who like my writing and will buy enough books to keep me in publication. I have a good job, so I’m not dependent on the income for survival, and I’m not counting on making enough money with my writing to get me to quit my day job. The simple fact is this: the stories will get written anyway, because that’s what I do. In my free time I write. I always have, since I was twelve years old. It’s only in the past five years that I’ve really made an effort to get anything published, but I’ve always been a writer, and I guess I always will be. So for me, a fruitful, successful career would mean that the stories that would have been written anyway are being read by someone, and hopefully some of those readers will like what I’ve written.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Alexander, Brett, chi-zine, chiaroscuro, Matt Mitchell, Savory, SFWA

Recently I had a story accepted for publication by the Mount Zion Review. This was my first acceptance, and I’ve been asked a few times how it came to be published, so here it is, in very short order:

I wrote the story, which is about 4700 words, in 2002. It is a dark fiction piece, but couldn’t really be classified as horror or even as speculative fiction. There is some graphic violence in it, and the main character (the one the title refers to as having no soul) is almost pure evil. The story sat on my hard drive for a while because I had no idea who to try to sell it to. I pushed around some other stories that I’d written in the mean time, hoping to find a suitable market for AMSS. In ‘03 I did submit it twice, and then once more in ‘05, but those were just stabs in the dark really. The mags I submitted to were either horror or mainstream lit and, although I thought it would look good in any of them, the editors passed. The fourth time I submitted it was early in ‘07 and I thought I had a winner. MZR publishes dark fiction, preferably with Appalachian themes. Nothing specifying that the story had to incorporate some fantastic or supernatural element, just dark. Well, this story has dark to spare, so I sent it in thinking that it had a chance.

In April I got that fantastic first acceptance letter, and since then I’ve had another story accepted to be published in an anthology called “Southern Fried Weirdness.” The story for SFW is one that is not particularly horror, although it does bear a fantastic element, which made it seem a bit easier to sell to me if only because there are more markets looking for that type material. I submitted that story, A Scent of Rain a total of four times as well before landing the big sale.

It should be noted that I have another story that I’ve submitted a total of 13 times so far. A story which I (evidently erroneously) felt would be easier to sell than some of my other works. In all, over the past five years, I have submitted 17 stories 58 times and received two acceptances, 49 rejections and have 9 awaiting a response.

Do I have a plan? Of course: I live in Alabama and there aren’t any publishers or literary agents around here that I can attempt to woo or even stalk, so I don’t see getting published any way but from the ground up, AKA the hard way. So I’m submitting. I have a handful of shorts that I believe are good (validation received on two of them) and I’m going to push them until they sell. I’m hoping it’ll be a bit easier now that I can add to my cover letter that I have two stories which have recently been published, but I’m not holding my breath. Some of my recent rejections (including a few from some professional markets) have had positive remarks about the story I submitted but gone on to say it didn’t fit what they were looking for at the time. Three in the past two months have gone on to say they would welcome my submitting work to them in the future. Things are looking up. So, the plan is: get these shorts published, preferably at least a few of them to professional markets, thereby allowing for my admission into the SFWA, at which point I will begin attempting to pimp my novel, already written and awaiting glory. (I’ve actually written three novels so far and have a few others in various stages of completion. I’m more of a novel writer than a short story writer, but I feel to succeed I must get shorts published first. Agents and book publishers will instantaneously toss your baby into the slush pile if you don’t have at least a few credits to your name. This is one of the gospels in which I believe.

Anyway, that’s my story so far. Updates hopefully will be coming with more rapidity now that the snowball with my name on it is rolling, picking up debris, packing on mass and aimed directly at the publishing industry as a whole.

I am Matt Mitchell.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Matt Mitchell, publishing