August 24th, 2014

It's obviously been a while since I've written here, which is a good part of the reason that I have never wanted to create a blog. I remember throughout my life how I tried to keep diaries and journals and there would be huge gaps of months and sometimes years in between writings. When I did write, it was usually lengthy and full of a lot of detail about the previous missing time periods, and it is pretty neat for me to go back and look at those entries. It always bothers me that I did not keep it up, writing not necessarily daily, but at least weekly or bi-weekly.

Part of the reason that I have not written in the past few months is that I did go on and complete my first short story called, "The Picture of the Ghost" and I actually submitted it to a popular magazine. After five weeks, I got my first rejection letter saying that the piece did not meet their needs at that time. I have been sitting on it since then, trying to find a better market for the tale. It did not fit the science fiction, horror, or fantasy categories, and after searching for several days, I determined that the category that it most closely fit was one called "paranormal". Unfortunately, there were not many listings for magazines looking for that type of work.

I have purchased some new resources that look promising and hope to resubmit this piece to a different venue very shortly.