Publishing

Today’s featured author is Lee. F. Patrick. Her story, “ReBorn,” tells a tale of two sets of twins learning more than they may have wanted to know about ancient Mayan beliefs.

1. What was your motivation in writing your story?

I’ve been a long-time member in my alter ego of IFWA (Imaginative Fiction Writers Association) in Calgary, AB for many, many years. At one time, we did themed readings at various bookstores. Coming up on Y2K (2000) there was a lot of interest in fiction. For those born more recently, there was a lot of ‘end of the world’ hysteria. I chose to write a more hopeful version of another upcoming ‘catastrophe.’ The premise was the end of the world once the Maya calendar comes to the end of the current cycle. But the stars would not go out; instead there was a rebirth that didn’t look that much different from the old world. I’d done some research on the Maya and their beliefs. The Hero Twins, who defeat the evil and rescue their father and uncle, seemed a good subject. Of course, those involved in the rebirth also had to be twins, I thought. So the two sets of twins are chosen to stand at the altar. Their sons represent the next incarnations of Hero Twins.

2. Does it have special meaning?

I enjoyed the research and trying to tell a complex story as a short piece. I tend to think I have a short story idea and they grow on me.

3. What do you do in your real life?

My day job when I wrote this story was that of biochemistry lab tech and lab manager in a research laboratory at the University of Calgary. Now I am a financial planner, give counsel on personal investments and insurance, and prepare tax returns for a number of creative people and small businesses in Canada.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

I often think a story idea will fit into the short format but some of them don’t. They grow to a novella or a multi-book series. ReBorn was one that stayed fairly short, though there is a version with lots more description. I tend to write plot first, adding dialogue as I go, sometimes with [condensed ‘this happens’] bits which are expanded later. Setting is usually very limited in the early drafts and can be cut out to conform to a market’s requirements. I sometimes struggle to isolate the problem and point of view character as I’m plotting for a short piece. Sometimes I’m in the wrong world, or the story really needs two viewpoints, which is not encouraged in short fiction. Still, I have managed to produce a number of short stories and poems, and to have published some of them. Others sit on editors’ desks, waiting for acceptance.

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

The first piece I wrote was a novel in 1990-ish. It turned into a trilogy which is sitting on my hard drive. I may have to rewrite it yet again. I’ve already done a complete rewrite, but that was some years ago. I’m sure that I will cringe at the writing, as I did before the first rewrite. The first publication was of “The Hunter,” a Celtic-style poem in AnThribihis Mhor, in 1998. A few others followed, but I stopped submitting, but kept writing, for many years, until 2015.

6. Where have you previously been published?

Since I became serious about finding homes for my works in 2015, I’ve been published in Polar Borealis Magazine (two short stories, two poems), Enigma Front: Burnt, and The Stories We Hide: Enigma Front 5, Starklight Press (Wild, Wicked and Sparkling), In Places Between (three times), Manawaker Audio, and Celestial Echo Press’ The Twofer Compendium (“ReBorn.”) I was a finalist for the Prix Aurora Award (the Canadian fiction award) in Poetry for “Shadows in the Mist” in 2018. My novels (Alter Egos, The Alanyo Heir, and Lonely Together) are published with Javari Press, along with some novellas (The Carina Project, Man’s Best Friend and Ethan and Monster) as it is hard to find markets for them. The last two are tie-ins to my novels; the first is sort of a prequel to another series.

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

Never give up your dream of writing. Write consistently and don’t edit your first line until you’ve finished the first draft.

Today’s featured author is Matt McGee. His story, “Dating in the 5’s,” tells the story of two single people who meet in a fast-food restaurant.

1. What was your motivation in writing your story? 

“Dating in the 5’s” started as a conversation between four of us one night, two men and two women. We all agreed we’re after the same thing: flirting and having a good time in whatever form that takes with whoever strikes our fancy that day. We also agreed there’s a strain of human we all strive to avoid: the overly groomed. As the story says, “The one thing good-looking people have in common is options.”

Everyone looks for something different in a lover. Sometimes the people who give us the most, who are the most interesting and ultimately end up becoming long-term relationships, are the ones we’re first to overlook. “Still waters run deep,” as the old saying goes. But to add metaphor to metaphor, sometimes you need those deeper waters when your boat’s loaded down with a lot of baggage.

“Dating in the 5’s” started as notes in my Blackberry (yep, still have one – best writing instrument ever). I took those notes and went from one fast food joint to another in town by night, writing each character’s experiences.

3. What do you do in your real life?

I drive drunk people around seven nights a week and play goalie in local leagues

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

My first short story “A Spin of the Wheels” came in 1989 as a college assignment. It was published shortly after in a small press magazine in Chicago. The advent of the internet has made the process so much more fun and made me twenty times more productive.

Today’s featured author is Dawn Vogel. Her short story in The Twofer Compendium, “A Pale Imitation,” tells the tale of one superhero, or is it two?

1. What was your motivation in writing your story? 

I’d come up with the character of Celadon for a story I wrote set in the 90s. I liked the idea of her being a legacy superhero—one passed down within a family—and I also liked the idea of a set of identical twins sharing the same superhero mantle. So this story was born out of a desire to play with all of those things and figuring out a way to mash them together.

2. Does it have special meaning? 

One of the things I’ve been told I do well as an author is writing family relationships, especially among siblings. I don’t have a twin, but I do have a close relationship with my own siblings, and my brother (three years younger) and I occasionally told people we were twins when we were younger and about the same size. I think I wanted a twin as a kid, so perhaps this is my way of exploring that with my writing.

3. What do you do in your real life? 

By day, I wear a lot of hats. I’m an office manager and copy editor for archaeologists and historians, but I also help with business development for the company, and occasionally I get to do some history work (my academic background is in history).

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

A lot of it is the time commitment of a novel vs. a short story. I can write and polish a short story in a few weeks if I’ve got time constraints. A novel takes me a few months to write, and then many more months to polish. So I can write a dozen short stories in a year, but probably only one or two novels. Short stories also have more immediacy for audiences, because they’re quick reads!

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

I wrote a story when I was about 4 or 5 years old that my mom typed for me and I illustrated. It didn’t have much of a plot, and I suspect the last line was prompted by my mom asking me a question, as I probably dictated the story to her.

My first published story was “The Recondite Riddle of the Rose Rogue” (surprisingly, not the longest of my story titles) in 2010 for the Crossed Genres steampunk issue.

6. Where have you previously been published? 

I’ve had about fifty of my short stories published, so that would be a long list. “A Pale Imitation” is connected to my story, “Happily Never After,” which appeared at The Colored Lens in 2018. People who like stories about siblings who don’t always get along but who still love each other might also like my stories in the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide series (I have stories in all but the first two volumes).

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

Because Celadon and the Celadon Cylcone are legacy heroes, an earlier incarnation of this hero appears in a novella I’m working on, set in a Hollywood analogue in the 1950s, which will hopefully be out this year!

Today we meet author Rose Strickman, whose story, “Heir to Snow,” is a beautifully written version of The Snow Queen tale.

1. What was your motivation in writing your story? 

I have always been fascinated by fairy tales, both in their classical forms and rewritten for other purposes. But I’ve never been convinced by “happily ever after.” There’s no such thing, not if you’re still living. Questions I often ask myself, when working with fairy tales are, What happened then? What happens after happily ever after? I also frequently interrogate the villains: what are their motivations? Are they really that evil, or is there more to the story? This is particularly true of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” which ends with “summer, glorious summer,” but with both Kay and Gerda stuck in perpetual childhood. How could that be? How could such an incredible quest not change both of them? What if those changes led to their eventual estrangement? And what if the Snow Queen experienced her own transformation, brushing so close to mortality? I also felt there was a strong connection between Gerda and the Snow Queen: they are two halves of a single whole. The story grew from there.

2. Does it have special meaning? 

One special meaning I take from “Heir to Snow” is both the inevitability of change and its cyclical nature. Gerda’s transformation into the Snow Queen is elementally powerful, a transformation she is helpless to resist; as, in fact, all change is. It destroys her life as a human woman, destroys her initially happy marriage to Kay, but also gives her new life and a new role. This role as the Snow Queen is both eternal—there is always a Snow Queen—and cyclical—the Snow Queen, like the seasons themselves, is always changing as new heirs step up and previous Queens become human women again. In every end there is a new beginning.

3. What do you do in your real life?

In my day job, I work in a legal office. I also spend a lot of time with my two adorable nephews! But I’d say writing is one of the most real parts of my life.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

I’m not ruling out publishing my own novel one day—in fact, that’s one of my ambitions. But there’s no denying that I get bogged down when trying to write novels. A short story is a concise thing and is often the perfect length for many of my ideas. It’s a medium that suits my creativity. I also enjoy writing to prompts, and that works better with short stories than novels.

When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

I wrote my very first story back in third grade. It was a vampire story that was both a family saga and the tale of a mad king. I submitted it to a school contest in exchange for a picture book, and got some very funny looks from teachers for a few weeks after that. My first published story was “The House in the Desert,” published in the e-zine The Lorelei Signal, back in 2014. I’ve been submitting ever since.

6. Where have you previously been published? 

“Heir to Snow” is my twenty-eighth publication. I’ve been published in e-zines such as The Lorelei Signal, Luna Station Quarterly, Tell-Tale Press, Feed Your Monster and Enchanted Conversation. I’ve also been published in a number of anthologies, including Sword and Sorceress 32, Earth: Giants, Golems and Gargoyles and, most recently, Monsters in Spaaaaace! I’ve also self-published novellas on Amazon.

Continuing in our series of interviews with authors whose fabulous stories appear in The Twofer Compendium: Gregory L. Norris.

His story, “The Echoes,” tells a tale of light and dark, with a little romance mixed in.

1. What was your motivation in writing your story? 

For the entire month of December 2018, I worked on a project called The Fortune Cookie Tales. Every morning that month, I cracked open a fortune cookie leftover from Chinese takeout and penned an entire story based upon the fortune. For Sunday, December 23, the fortune was “Keep your feet on the ground even though friends flatter you.” On all but three of the days of that month of free-writing, I wrote from nothing, no preparation. That day, I matched the fortune with a superhero-themed dream I’d had and had written the details down on a note card in my inventory of story ideas. This seemed a good match for that particular fortune and I dashed off the longhand draft of “The Echoes” by day’s end.

2. Does it have special meaning? 

When I was a teenager, I bonded with the female Captain Marvel from the early 1980s whose powers involved mastery over the entire EM spectrum. I loved her and still do. Often since then, I have dreams in which I’m made of light and flying. This story owed to one such dream in which I was a superhero tasked with saving the world. The true identity of the supervillain came about in that dream, which was such a cool and unexpected surprise!

3. What do you do in your real life?

I am a full-time professional writer, romancing and being romanced by my emerald-eyed muse daily. Writing is the heartbeat inside my heart. It’s all I ever wanted to do from the time I was a teen, all I’ve cared about doing. I publish regularly and have had some recent successes in screenwriting, which I was poised to do in my 30s and likely would have, had I shifted my location from the East to the West Coast. I spent a good deal of time caring for my disabled spouse, which made my writing time at a premium. Somehow, things got done but I’ve felt this way since I was fifteen: there’s never enough time to write.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

I write both. But I love the short story format for its brevity, its impact, and, I’ll admit it, its instant gratification. I tend to write “smaller” tales featuring fewer characters. When I have many characters, I go epic – a/k/a novels. I recently finished one such project and have a request for it by a major publisher. So that’s on my to-do list for early 2020 as well as the numerous projects that howl at me in the night to complete.

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

I dabbled with writing from the time I was ten. Then, at fifteen, on a summer sleepover at a friend’s house, I raced to put THE END on what was my first “novel” (at the time I didn’t realize it was really a novella). I reached the last line and something incredible happened. My entire body dissolved into electric pins and needles. It was the first time I ever experienced pure inspiration and a light was switched on inside me – I loved to write and I was going to be a writer. With the ink still drying on that finished project, I put pen to a fresh sheet of paper and began another story, then and there. Almost thirty years ago to this day, I wrote a short story called “The Victorian Woman,” a gothic ghost story. I typed it up and sent it off to the late, great magazine Night Mountains. A week later, my story came back covered in pencil. The editor said that if I made her suggested changes, she would be thrilled to publish it. I did, and that was some 4,000 published credits ago. For over a decade I worked for numerous glossy magazines and would often turn in hundreds of feature articles, columns, and short news stories per year.

6. Where have you previously been published? 

My stories have appeared in numerous magazines and fiction anthologies for almost thirty years. Some of the recent standouts include Monsters of Any Kind, DreamForge Magazine, and Whittier Than Thou, in which my short story shared a Table of Contents with a reprint by none other than Mark Twain. In the first week of 2020, my short stories have sold to ParABNormal Magazine and the anthology 20,000 Leagues Remembered, which honors the 150^th anniversary of Jules Verne’s wonderful classic novel.

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

Only that in 2019, I accomplished something I’d only ever done once before in my career. Between 70 finished fiction projects (two novels, two feature film screenplays, 12 novellas, the rest short stories), I put down over half a million total words for the year. I have a generous muse – and one who is often a taskmaster!

Fifth in our series of interviews with the authors whose fabulous stories appear in The Twofer Compendium: Kerry E.B. Black. Her story, “Blanket of Black,” is the tale of the bond between twins who are opposites.

1. What was your motivation in writing your story?

Jaimie and James are twins in my novel Season of Secrets. In developing Jaimie’s character, I explored her grief when James passed. This story was part of that exploration.

2. Does it have special meaning?

Siblings often struggle for their individuality, especially when one is dependent upon the other. James relied on Jaimie, and although she felt a measure of guilt, she enjoyed the independence of separation when she enrolled at school. However, when James died, the exhilaration of freedom transformed into guilt.

3. What do you do in your real life?

My life’s too dull for a bio.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

Short stories are cosmologies expressed in few words. It takes practice to compress thoughts into tiny tales, and I enjoy the challenge. Besides, I love reading short stories; there’s something satisfying in reading a complete story in one session. I hope other fans of the genre find something to enjoy in my efforts.

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?

From an early age, I wrote short stories, most of which I never published. (Back in those days of pocket copyrights, stories were printed out on cotton bond paper and sent with a SASE to prospective publishers.) After a lengthy hiatus to raise kids, I returned to writing and found a supportive online community and some great local friends, too. Their presence makes writing less lonely.

6. Where have you previously been published?

I have, indeed, been lucky enough to have several pieces placed in some amazing publications. And every time one of my stories finds a literary placement, I feel a thrill.

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

If you want to be a writer, never give up on your dream. If you submit something for publication and the editors decline, don’t despair. That means you’ve not yet found the story’s home. All writers feel the sting of rejection. All of them. And remember, editors are usually writers themselves. They have a vision for their projects that perhaps your work didn’t quite fit, but assess the story and try again. Also, I can’t stress enough, find a community that bolsters your enthusiasm. I can’t wait to read your words!

Fourth in our series of interviews with authors whose stories appear in The Twofer Compendium: Carolyn Geduld. Her story, “Multiple Loves,” introduces us to Steph, a woman looking for love online. She meets a man whose name is Roy. Or is it Ray?

Thank you, Carolyn, for your story!

1. What was your motivation in writing your story?

I began writing fiction in September 2018. “Multiple Loves” was written while I was deciding between two genres. One genre was Humor with a grim twist (“Multiple Loves” belongs to this group). The other was Psychological Horror with a humorous twist. Although I enjoy writing both genres, psychological horror has been my mainstay.

2. Does it have special meaning?

I believe all of my fiction is autobiographical in the sense that everything creative is ultimately autobiographical. That said, while I am not a twin, I grew up with twin cousins. They may have some meaningful place in my imagination that inspired “Multiple Loves.”

3. What do you do in your real life?

Writing has become my real life. Other than that, I have been a psychotherapist for the past forty years in Bloomington, Indiana—a university town that is central to my fiction.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

Actually, I write connected short stories that may become novels when joined. “Multiple Loves,” for example, is one of five stories with the same main character, Steph, a foolish young woman “looking for love in all the wrong places.”

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?
   First short story: September 2018. First publication: “The Pink Envelope” in Not Your Mother’s Breastmilk: 4/26/19
6. Where have you previously been published?

I have been very fortunate to have had 17 short stories accepted for publication in literary journals and anthologies in 2019 and one so far in 2020.

Thirty of my connected short stories about a mass killing’s effects on a small town are being published under the title Take Me Out the Back by Black Rose Publishers in August 2020.

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

All of my stories come to me after sleeping. I don’t dream them. I just wake up knowing what to write. If I get stuck, I take a nap. That removes the block.

Third in our series of interviews with the authors whose fabulous stories are in The Twofer Compendium: Steve Carr. His story, “A Bayou Tale,” tells the story of twins who are different as Night and Day.

1.What was your motivation in writing your story?

I liked the prompt of writing a story about twins. I had only written one story before this one with twins as the main characters so I wanted to see if I could do something different in the way of telling a story about twins that also had the feel of being very region-specific.

2. Does it have special meaning?

I have traveled through the Louisiana bayous a couple of times and it evokes for me a place of mystery and magic. It felt like the perfect setting for my story.

3. What do you do in your real life?

I’m retired. I write.

4. What draws you to write short stories vs. novels?

The short story form is art when done well. Since 2016 I have been trying to perfect the art of writing short stories while also reading short stories written by my peers, paying close attention to how others interpret the art for themselves. I have written one novel, but the entire process drove me crazy. It requires a different artistic approach, one that I am not yet attuned to.

5. When did you write your first story, unpublished and then published?                                                       I was a junior in high school and wrote a very lengthy short story, which may have been my first, about something medieval, complete with knights and damsels in distress. It wasn’t published but I think I received an A for it. I didn’t really turn to writing and publishing short stories until 2016, but while in college (back in the 1980s) I wrote and submitted three short stories to different publications and they were all published. I still have them somewhere in my files. I wasn’t interested in writing short stories at that time. My interest was in writing plays.

6. Where have you previously been published?

Literally Stories, Sick Lit Magazine, Door is a Jar, Flame Tree Publishing,Viewfinder Magazine, Fantasia Divinity Publications, Fictive Dream, 50 Word Stories, Centum Press, Short Tale 100, The Spotty Mirror, CultureCult Magazine, Temptation Magazine, Visitant Literary Journal, The Wagon Magazine, Infernal Ink, Tiger Shark, Double Feature, Ricky’s Back Yard, Bento Box, NoiseMedium, Chronicle, Zimbell House Publishing, The Drunken Llama, 67 Anthology, Inane Pure Slush Vol. 14, MASHED: Culinary Tales of Erotic Horror Anthology, Communicators League, Jakob’s Horror Box, Panorama Journal, Midnight Circus, Dark Gothic Resurrected Magazine, The Haunted Traveler, Fixional, The Gathering Storm Magazine, Rhetoric Askew, Wilde Stories 2017 (Lethe Press), Trigger Warnings, Night to Dawn, Not Your Mother’s Breast Milk, Aphotic Realm, Bull & Cross, The Dirty Pool, Thrice Fiction, Story and Grit, Thousand And One Stories, Occulum, Aether and Ichor, 4StarStories, Tuck Magazine, Ariel Chart, Truth Serum Wiser Anthology, Lunaris Review, Trembling With Fear, Boned: A Collection of Skeletal Writing,The Horror Zine, Hot Tub Astronaut, Kristell Ink Holding on by our Fingertips Anthology, Ordinary Madness, The Serving House Journal, Near to the Knuckle, Ripcord, Varnish Journal, Yalobusha Review, Clarendon House Publications, Cadaverous Magazine, Blue Fifth Review, Black Heart Magazine, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Storyland Literary Review Magazine, Tessellate Magazine, The Airgonaut, Jokes Review, Lycan Valley Press, Two Sisters Publishing, Your One Phone Call, Furtive Dalliance Literary Review, New Reader Magazine, The Galway Review, Deadsteam Anthology, Barking Sycamores, Bewildering Stories, Soft Cartel, Quail Bell Magazine, Dodging The Rain, Fear of Monkeys, Locust Magazine, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Cabinet of Heed, Aurora Wolf, Night Garden Journal, As Told by Things, Storyland, Dastaan World Magazine, Saddlebag Dispatches, Screen Door Review, Spillwords, Strangely Funny, Feed Your Monster, Runcible Spoon, Round Up Zine, Literary Hatchet, Enchanted Conversation, The World of Myth Magazine, Taxicab Magazine, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Who Writes Short Shorts, Propertius Press, Nude Bruce Review, Literary Hatchet, Ink Pantry, Clever Magazine, Jete Away Anthology (Hurricane Press), QSF Impact Anthology, Terror House Magazine, Chelsea Station, Mirror Dance, Free Library of the Internet Void, Writers’ Cafe Magazine, Millwork, Qutub Minar Literary Review Magazine, Fantasia Fairy Tales, Theme of Absence, Kingdoms in the Wild, Founder’s Favourites, Other People’s Flowers (podcast), CommuterLit, The Blue Pages, Empyreome, Fear & Trembling Magazine, Altered Reality Online Magazine, Horrified Press (Lonesome Train anthology), The Piker Press, Prismatica Magazine, Retreats From Oblivion, Zany Zygote Review, Writer’s Block, Close to the Bone, CafeLit, Natural Light: 2018 Scars Publications collection book, Brave Voices Magazine, Spill Yr Guts Horror Zine, Colp: Issue 4: A Little Bit of Nonsense, Me First Magazine, Frontier Tales, Pixie Forest Publishing (Modern Fantasy Anthology), Nthanda Review, Fathom Magazine, Chronotrope Magazine, Zooscape, Potato Soup Journal, Mental Papercuts, Slippage Lit, Emerging Worlds, Bending Genres, The Selkie, The Mark Literary Review, Setu, The Elixir Magazine, Turnpike Magazine, Aromatica Poetica, Selcouth Station, Every Writer’s Resource, All Worlds Wayfarer Literary Magazine, The Andreasperat, Rhetoric Askew volume 07, Blackbird Publishing (Golden Door anthology), The Rye Whiskey Review, Mosh Lit, Inner Circle Writers’ Magazine, Teleport Magazine, Our Wonderful Anthology, Still Point Arts Quarterly, District Lit, Foreign Literary Journal, Stinkwaves, Zombie Works Publications Monsterthology 2, Sweet Tree Review, Zombie Pirate Publishing, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Creativity Webzine, Words for the Wild, Celestial Echo Press Twin Anthology, Collective Realms, Active Muse, Volume 10 The Best of Frontier Tales, Shlock! Webzine, Portland Metrozine, Drunk Monkeys, Novelty Magazine, Dying Planet Anthology (Flame Tree Press), Great Void Books, Black Poppy Review, Christmas Lites Anthology, Dream Noir, The Stray Branch, Literary Yard, Sweet Tree Review, Breadcrumbs Magazine. Impspired, Breaking Rules Publishing, cli-fi anthology Terraforming Earth for Aliens. 

7. Are there any other details you’d like us to include?

Thank you for accepting and publishing my story. I’m honored to be included along with such great writers.