My short story Drawing Dead is in the running at Electric Spec magazine.  It’s funny, but I used to get really excited about second round consideration. I’ve been in the running in some of the biggest magazines around (ironically, most often for this one).   And you can only get so much of a thrill out of getting kicked in the teeth (as Eileen puts it, the ‘you haven’t been rejected yet’ email). 

Now luckily for me, I’ve turned many of these ‘second round’ into ‘sold’ (five times, thankyouverymuch).  Drawing Dead is the second story I’ve written in the urban-fantasy genre — but I’ve since trimmed it down to 4000 words (which seems to be the sweet spot for length) and I consider it better than the original — though it was painful to cut some of the scenes…

What am I working on now?  Well, things are slow.  Because I have this story called Cold Dark which is about an isolated 8-year old boy who discovers that his father is planning on killing him (no, really, I don’t have daddy issues).  It is a difficult story to write, and I”m only at 1000 words (projected length — 4000).  More on that later, however.