Thursday 10 December 2009

Second Try for The Burning Room

A couple of bits of news this week, I'll get to the other one over the weekend. First up, I'm immensely pleased to announce that new professional-rate market Bull Spec have picked up my ghost story The Burning Room, which has been languishing ever since short-lived magazine The Willows accepted it and then promptly expired.

Harking back to my last post, the version that finally got okayed is some 500 words longer than the one that would have appeared back then. Editor Sam Montgomery-Blinn felt that the end was lacking a certain something and asked for a couple more lines, and me being me, I got a little carried away. It's easily done when there's the promise of being paid by the word, and it's a lucky coincidence that the new ending is a huge improvement.

I guess it's always a gamble staking work on a new publisher, but I've been hugely impressed by the passion and enthusiasm Sam's shown, both in regards to my own tale and on the Bull Spec blog. So while it would be kind of appropriate that The Burning Room should be cursed to never see the light of day, I'm hoping it's going to have a bit more luck this second time out.

Lastly, here's yet another glowing review of The Living Dead that picks out Stockholm Syndrome for special comment. Cheers to The Cimmerian for the thumbs up.

2 comments:

  1. Congratulations! I'm glad your story has found a new home after the last pub fell through. I've also just found out that Bull Spec is buying my story Turning Back the Clock. I agree that Samuel has a lot of enthusiasm which is nice to see, and I think he's got a lot of good ideas and I hope he does well.

    Also, I don't remember if I found you to tell you this before, but your story Stockholm Syndrome made my Best of Pseudopod top 10 list when I wrote it up a couple months ago:
    http://www.diabolicalplots.com/?p=848

    Pseudopod was the venue of my first sale, so I'll always have a soft spot for them. :)

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  2. Hi David,

    Apologies for not responding earlier, I only just realised I could get e-mail alerts when people comment - please don't tell this to my employers, who are under the impression that I'm a trained IT Technician :)

    Congrats in return on your own Bull Spec sale. I've really got good feeling about them, I've even gone so far as to order the first issue - not something I normally do, because my to-read pile is absurd as it is!

    I'm glad you liked Stockholm Syndrome, and even more so that it made your top ten. I too will always have a soft spot for Pseudopod, not only did they do a fantastic job with Stockholm Syndrome, I'd never have got into The Living Dead if they hadn't accepted it first.

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