Living the Fictional Dream

I received word over the weekend that I’ve had four flash pieces accepted for the 2009 Every Day Fiction anthology. I had one story (“Remember?”) accepted into last year’s anthology, which was exciting enough, but to have four accepted is amazing!

Not to toot my own horn, but I felt that the odds were pretty good that “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight” would get in. It was on the top 10 stories of all time list for several months running.

“A Million Faces” seemed to have a good shot, as well. It was on the top 10 stories of all time list for a while, as well — though not nearly as long as tCaFoYSK. Personally, I think aMF is the best story I’ve ever had appear on EDF, so I was really rooting for this one and am thrilled it got into the anthology.

The other two stories to be selected surprised me — “Fortune Cookies” and “Frigid.”

“Fortune Cookies” is a fun little short — a little humor and a little surreal. I didn’t realize it was a favorite, and was surprised to look back at it today and see it had such a high star rating.

With “Frigid,” I’d actually thought it was published after the anthology deadline, but I looked back and it just squeaked into the running by being published at the end of August. That poor story actually had a bad start out at EDF due to technical issues in which every other paragraph was missing when it was originally posted. The EDF crew fixed it right after I emailed them about it, and it’s fine now. I hadn’t realized until I went back to look at it today that it actually recovered more than I’d thought on the star rating. It’s not ranked as high as the others mentioned above, but it had barely been holding at 3 stars when it first went live. I’m glad it got in, though, because I’m partial to my superhero universe. This is the first story set in that ‘verse to be published somewhere other than the wonderful A Thousand Faces.

All in all, I am surprised and excited by this multiple acceptance, and I cannot wait until the new anthology is available. Last year, I gave several copies as Christmas gifts. I wonder if the new one will be out in time for that. If so, that is several gifts taken care of already. If not, then I’ll save the copies for next year’s birthday gifts instead.

I can’t wait to find out who else I know has stories in the anthology. I’ve heard that Alex had a story accepted, but quite a few of my writing group mates, blog friends, and even a college friend had at least one story published over there this year. There were so many good stories, I don’t know how Camille and Jordan can narrow it down! If you’ve had a story accepted, comment and let me know!

Oh, and in case you’re interested, in addition to the five stories linked above, I have had two other stories published over at EDF in the past year – “A Castle in the Clouds” and “Honor Bound.” If you’ve never read them, check them out.