One-Oh-One & Counting

Hi. I took a few months off from blogging at SleuthSayers on Fortnight Fridays in order to work a term as chief judge for the 2016 Edgars Award in the Best Novel category for those hardcover mysteries published in 2015. Turns out, reading 509 books in a nine and a half month period, plus all those admin duties, writing my own stuff, taking care of two young grandsons and finding that my warranty was expiring at a faster rate than I cared for, wore me down. Appears I'm not as bulletproof as I used to be.

My 31st story in AHMM is in this issue

For those of you who joined the SleuthSayer family in my absence, I'll bring you up to speed with a short bio. I'm a retired federal agent, Vietnam vet '67-'68 (man, was that a long time ago), served three years on the Mystery Writers of America national Board of Directors and I primarily write short stories. The latter of which brings us to today's topic. And yes, you should probably consider this as having a couple moments of BSP.

For a writer just starting out, the first acceptance, check and publication is electrifying to that writer's ego, which contributes to their desire to write more. In the time that follows, each and every additional acceptance, check and publication is greatly valued and quickly becomes a statistic to be carefully recorded in said writer's bibliography. In my case, the first was a $250 biker story to Easyriders magazine and was submitted under a double alias. As federal agents, we weren't allowed to have outside employment of any kind, so the story byline was a street nickname from the bike gangs and the check came in one of my undercover aliases for which I had a driver's license. It went from there.

Obviously, a short story author with any proficiency can stack up stats faster than most novelists, mainly due to the difference in word count required for each of the two categories. Which also means a short story author can submit a new manuscript more often and has less time involved in each writing project than does the author of a novel. I always thought my bent to create short stories was based in some aspect of short attention span tendencies, but now as I write this, I also suspect a desire for more instant gratification for my writing labors. Unfortunately, one does not get rich writing short stories.

As the years rolled by and I updated my bio as a panelist for various writers conferences, I always had to increase the numbers for those short stories of mine that had been published in the past. Sometimes, the increase in numbers merely crept along and other times they took nice jumps. Of course, if I turned out as much writing material as our fellow SleuthSayer John Floyd, I would have entertained the notion of acquiring some of those little, yellow minions to keep track of my submissions, acceptances, publication dates and to run all those Woman's World magazine $500 checks to the bank. (John, did the bank ever give you a free toaster for depositing that bucket load of checks?)

French church with St. Leonard's remains

Anyway, in the middle of April 2016, I received an e-contract from Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine for "The Left Hand of Leonard." In case you're wondering about the title, the story concerns the remains of St. Leonard in a time when holy relics were bartered, sold and even stolen. It is the 6th story in my 1660's Paris Underworld series involving a young orphan, incompetent pickpocket, and is my 34th story to be sold to AHMM. You probably won't see it in print for another year. It is also my 100th short story to be accepted for publication. Okay, that's the BSP.

So now that I've reached this numerical peak, the problem is how do I keep score for the future in my bios after one more sale occurs? I assume that the acceptable method for that point is "over one hundred short stories." But, at what point do the numbers change after that? Increasing by single digits would be tiresome after a while. The same with increasing the amount by tens. Surely, "over 150 short stories" would be acceptable when and if  the time comes. However, I don't know that I could live long enough to wait for "over two hundred short stories." If anyone knows the proper etiquette for this type of situation, please let me know. Other than that, it's good to be back in the family.

NOTE: After I wrote the above blog, I got an e-mail on May 8th from Greg Herren, the editor for the 2016 Bouchercon anthology, Blood on the Bayou. That meant I had to change the blog title. Seems my story, "Hell Hath No Fury," has been accepted for their anthology. There is no pay, all benefits go to support the New Orleans public library, but that acceptance does go toward my 101st publishing credit, so it's a win-win situation and I'm happy.

See you again in a month.