Published 3x

My story "Spring Break Surprise" appears in the March True Confessions and my stories "Cemetery Fundraiser" and "Marking Territory" appear in the March True Story.

Six

I finished and submitted my sixth short story of the year this evening. This one's a 4,000-word confession I started October 24, 2015.

3

I received my 3rd acceptance of the year while I was sleeping. This one's for a confession.

2

I received my 2nd acceptance of the year this afternoon, this time for an April Fool's Day story.

Lida Bushloper's 30-year story

On her blog today, Lida Bushloper writes about her experience writing and then shepherding to publication "The 30-Year Story," which isn't the title of the story but how long it took to find a home, and she mentions my role in its eventual publication.

Interviewed at Rejectomancy.com

I've been interviewed by Aeryn Rudel at Rejectomancy.com, a blog about being rejected and what writers might glean from the various ways in which editors reject submissions. Read the interview at: http://rejectomancy.com/2016/01/13/ranks-of-the-rejected-michael-bracken/.

1

I received my first acceptance of the year this evening, this for a 4,200-word bit of Texas noir.

2015 in review

41 acceptances (vs. 42 in 2014).

32 rejections (vs. 21 in 2014).

37 short stories published (vs. 36 in 2014), 3 articles/essays published (vs. 1 in 2014).

I completed 41 short stories (vs. 53 in 2014).

I completed (to final draft) 153,000 words of short fiction (vs. 198,000 in 2014).

That's an average story length of 3,732 words (vs. an average of 3,375); the shortest story was 1,400 words; the longest was 7,000 words.

I completed and submitted an average of .79 short stories each week (vs. an average of 1.02 each week in 2014).

(I only track completed short fiction word counts, not words written for incomplete projects, nor words written for other forms of writing.)

Observations:

My productivity decreased last year, my rejections increased, and my sales remained stable. There are several reasons these things happened.

1) I married and moved. Moving took up a great deal of my time during the final third of the year and still impacts me now as I prepare to sell the home in which I lived for 21 years.

2) I was engaged in a year-long writing-related project that involved no actual writing. I recently completed that project.

3) I continued to write a few stories just for me rather than for specific markets. These stories are often difficult to place because they don't clearly fit the needs of existing markets with which I am familiar. They often collect rejections while I work my way through potential markets.

Five

I finished and submitted my fifth short story of the year this evening. This one's a 2,600-word Mother's Day story I started writing March 22, 2013.

Four

I finished and submitted my fourth short story of the year. This one's a 1,300-word bit of crime fiction I started writing October 12, 2014.

Three

I just finished and submitted my third short story of the year. This one's a 3,500-word Mother's Day story I started writing February 9, 2013.

Two

I finished and submitted my second short story of the year, a 1,300-word Mother's Day story I started writing July 3, 2005.

One

This is a new year and the count starts over in my annual goal to write and sell an average of one short story each week.

A few minutes ago I completed and submitted my first short story of the year, a 2,700-word confession I started writing December 7, 2009.