The first acceptance!

As the title says, I got my first acceptance over the weekend.

Actually, two! Though both in the same magazine. One is a very short story (386 words) and the other is a poem. They’ll be published in Spotlight Magazine’s first ever issue, due out in May 2018 (at a price of £3.99).

In celebration, I’m going to talk a little about each.

The short story is called Drive Away, and is actually one of the oldest stories I have… I wrote it back around 2005, I guess. It sat in a folder with all my old certificates from school and university, and I just saw it a couple of months ago (I’m applying for jobs, so was flicking through certificates) and decided it was actually quite a nice story. So, I typed it up, did a bit of editing and sent it off.

The interesting thing about the story for me is that it isn’t really a story so much as a series of reflections of a guy in an unhappy moment, and it wasn’t written from an idea, it was written as a flow of consciousness inspired by a song (of the same name) that I had previously written.

I won’t put the story here (as that’s what the magazine’s for!), but in lieu of that, you can read the lyrics of the song here, which I suppose could be considered a poem, though the rhythm is a little too regular to be satisfying without music. The song lyrics really don’t overlap with the story, but they do achieve the same feeling, which was all I had in mind while scribbling. The song does exist on-line somewhere, but I don’t really wanna link it here, so if you’re interested, drop me a message.

Moving on to the poem; it’s a very short piece (15 lines) called The infinite cat theorem. Now, I’ve gotta say, I love this poem. I used to be a lot better at writing poetry, I think, but have real trouble with it these days. However, with this one, it just rolled out. What’s more, my other half, who frequently errs towards a state of meh with regards to my stuff, really likes it. I suppose there’s not a lot you can say about a 15-line poem without saying too much, so I’ll just say it’s dedicated to my cat-lady love and our little grey furball–the Ninj.

To close, I’ll just renew my submission stats. Ten weeks after getting going with this, I have: