Published 2x

My story "The Man I Thought I Loved" appears in the June issue of True Confessions, and my story "30 & Living with My Daddy" appears in the June issue of True Story.

Ten

I completed and submitted my tenth short story of the year a few minutes ago. This one's a 5,500-word confession I started writing March 25, 2014.

Published: "Danny"

My story "Danny" appears in the just-published anthology Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels) (Volume 3). Learn more here.

Nine

I completed and submitted my ninth short story of the year this evening. This one's a 4,600-word confession I started March 1, 2011.

Free Today

In celebration of Earth Day, Fifty Shades of Green, an anthology of erotic gardening stories that contains my story "Seed," is free for Kindle. Get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Green-Rebekah/dp/B00MLEFNLY/ref=sr_1_3_twi_2_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1429622078&sr=8-3&keywords=fifty+shades+of+green

Eight

I completed and submitted my eighth short story of the year this afternoon. This one's a 4,800-word confession I started writing March 26, 2010.

10, 11

My 10th and 11th acceptances of the year were sitting in my inbox when I awoke this morning.

9

I received my 9th acceptance of the year this afternoon.

Seven

I just finished and submitted my seventh short story of the year, a 2,900-word confession I started writing August 16, 2012.

Six

Earlier this evening I finished and submitted a 5,400-word confession I started writing April 5, 2013.

A matter of style

Crime fiction, historical fiction, and other fiction that has characters reading newspaper articles as part of the story's plot run a high risk of making stylistic errors that can bounce a knowledgeable reader out of the story, much like a affixing a silencer to a revolver bounces out readers familiar with firearms.

Newspaper articles are typically written to conform to the dictates of the Associated Press Stylebook. Therefore, the author and the copyeditor should put down their copy of The Chicago Manual of Style when writing and editing sections of a story purported to be newspaper articles.

For example, a novel I am currently reading quotes a fictitious newspaper article from 2004 using the phrase "near Conroe, TX," immediately signaling to an astute reader that no real newspaper article is being quoted.

Texas is one of eight state names never abbreviated in a newspaper article, and no properly written newspaper article uses the two-letter USPS state postal code to refer to a state unless it is part of a complete mailing address that includes a ZIP code.

A writer who has never been a journalist might not know this, but no good copyeditor should be excused for allowing this error to pass into print. A good copyeditor knows which stylebook to follow and when.

-1

I had a story unaccepted today when a publisher cancelled a line of books, so now I'm back to only 8 acceptances for the year.

Published 2x

My story "Alone on Mother's Day" appears in the May True Confessions, and my story "Can Mom Remember?" appears in the May True Story.

Reviewed: "Quarryville, Texas"

Jochem Vandersteen at Sons of Spade reviewed The Private Eye Writers of America Presents: 50 Shades of Grey Fedora. Though my story--"Quarryville, Texas"--wasn't mentioned by title, it was mentioned:

"Some tales are a bit raunchier than others, Bracken's probably the more hardcore one. If you don't like that kind of stuff, don't worry, it is at the beginning but not indicative to the rest."

Read the entire review here.

8, 9

I received my 8th and 9th acceptances of the year this evening.

One of six

Glynis Scrivens asked six writers which writing how-to books they thought most influenced their short story writing, and she included their responses in "The Best Books for short stories," published in Writers' Forum #162.

I discussed How to Write and Sell Confessions by Susan C. Feldhake and Confession Writers' Handbook by Florence K. Palmer and Marguerite McClain. Without the jumpstart these two books gave me, I might never have become a confession writer.

7

I received my 7th acceptance of the year this morning, this time for a reprint written by one of my pseudonyms.

Published: "Beneath Still Waters"

My short mystery "Beneath Still Waters" appears in the just-published anthology And All Our Yesterdays (Darkhouse Books).

Learn more at Amazon.

Published

My story "Flyboy" appears in the recently released anthology Best Gay Romance 2015 (Cleis Press).

Published

My story "My Lover or My Husband" appears in the April True Story.

Published 3x

My stories "Cum Bumps," "Backdoorman," and "A Cock & Bull Story" appear in The Mammoth Book of Uniform Erotica (Robinson/Running Press). The the official release date apparently is next month, my copies arrived today.

Five

I finished and submitted my fifth short story of the year this evening. This one's a 4,900-word confession I started writing January 13, 2002.

Four

I finished and submitted by fourth short story of the year this morning. It's a 3,500-word confession I started writing October 20, 2012.

6

I received my 6th acceptance of the year a few days ago, but I forgot to post the news at the time.

Published: "Quarryville, Texas"

My erotic private eye story "Quarryville, Texas" appears in the just-published anthology The Private Eye Writers of America Presents: 50 Shades of Grey Fedora.

Learn more here.

Published

My essay "High on Gardening" appears in the March/April 2015 Texas Gardener.

5

I received my 5th acceptance of the year this evening, this time for reprint rights to a story first published in 1983.

3,4

I received my 3rd and 4th acceptances of the year. Both were for Mother's Day stories.

Three

I finished and submitted my third short story of the year this evening. This one's a 5,400-word Father's Day story I started writing on February 20, 2012.

Published 2x

My story "Love Lost and Love Gained" appears in the March True Story, and my story "Turning Trash into Treasure" appears in the March True Confessions.

The best thing I wrote today

I was replying to a letter from a Professional Writing student at my alma mater, and I wrapped up my many words of advice with:

No one will ever hand you a writing career. You have to earn it one word at a time.

Two

I finished writing and submitted my second story of the year. This one's a 1,700-word Mother's Day story.

One

I finished and submitted my first short story of the year this evening. This one's a 2,100-word Mother's Day story I started writing February 8, 2013.

Reviewed: "Mutable Memories"

My story "Mutable Memories" is one of many mentioned in Lloyd A. Meeker's review of the anthology Men of the Manor at the website Out in Print. He says:

"The most chilling, however, was Michael Bracken’s tale of a butler’s calculated theft and blackmail, Mutable Memories."

Read the entire review here.

2

I received my second acceptance of the year, this time for a 1,700-word confession.

2014 in review

42 acceptances (vs. 40 in 2013).

21 rejections (vs. 8 in 2013).

36 short stories published (vs. 45 in 2013), 1 article/essay published (vs. 0 in 2013).

I completed 53 short stories (vs. 40 in 2013).

I completed (to final draft) 198,000 words of short fiction (vs. 142,500 in 2013).

That's an average story length of 3,735 words (vs. an average of 3,563); the shortest story was 300 words; the longest was 10,000 words.

I completed and submitted an average of 1.02 short stories each week (vs. an average of .77 each week in 2013).

(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 increased last year while my rejections increased and my sales decreased. There are at least two reasons for this:

1) I wrote a handful of stories just for me rather than for specific markets. Though I have already found homes for a few of them, these stories tend to be difficult to place because they don't clearly fit the needs of existing markets with which I am already familiar. They tend to collect rejections while I work my way through potential markets.

2) I attempted to crack new markets, and I put some effort into writing for markets to which I have not sold anything in several years and had not submitted anything to in quite some time. I had limited success with these efforts, though I collected some really nice personal rejections.

Published

Today's mail also brought good news: My story "Kiss of Life at Midnight" appears in the February True Confessions.

1

2015 began with depressing news: My first rejection of the year was waiting in my inbox when I logged on January 1.

Today's acceptance--my first of year--more than makes up for yesterday. This acceptance was for a mystery to be published in a small press anthology.

42

I received my 42nd acceptance of the year this evening, this time for a confession.

41

I received my 41st acceptance of the year late this afternoon, surpassing last year's 40 acceptances with several days left in the year to nudge the total up another acceptance or two.

Published

My erotic crime fiction story "Mutable Memories" appears in the anthology Men of the Manor, which was published in October, though my copies didn't arrive until today.

Reviewed

Lirtle reviews Men of the Manor at Prism Book Alliance and has this to say about "Mutable Memories," my contribution to the anthology:

This is raunchy and irreverent and I love it. Young men all around, behaving like the free sexual beings they’re fortunate enough to be able to express themselves as, thanks to the lives they lead. This is rife with straight-faced tongue-in-cheek humor. This definitely qualifies as more Downton Abbey erotica for your dining pleasure. Enjoy it. I know I did. This is another author of which I want to read more of his work. And the title, yeah, it fits. Nicely plotted short story. 

4.25 stars

Read the entire review here.

40

I received my 40th acceptance of the year today, this time for a story I submitted to an anthology in May 2013.

Fifty-three

I finished and submitted my fifty-third short story of the year this evening. This one's a 4,600-word confession I started writing February 1, 2009. Until I picked it up again a few weeks ago, all I had written was the opening scene.

Interviewed

I'm interviewed today on the Boo Books blog about "Little Spring," my contribution to the anthology Haunted, which they released last month. Read the interview here: http://boobooks.net/boo-blog/.

Fifty-two

I finished and submitted my fifty-second short story of the year this evening. This one's a 5,000-word private eye story.

Published 3x

"My Quirky & Strange Son" appears in the January True Story, "The End of the Year" appears in the January True Confessions, and "High-Rise Hook-Up" appears in the just-published anthology Hired Hands.

39

I received my 39th acceptance of the year this afternoon, this time for a 3,000-word confession.

Fifty-one

I finished and submitted my fifty-first short story of the year this evening. This one's a 3,300-word confession.

Fifty

I completed and submitted my fiftieth short story of the year a few minutes ago. This one's a 10,000-word private eye story, the longest non-novel story I've completed since I began tracking word counts in 2009.

This one was written by invitation, but I have concerns about it. While I'm confident I've written a good story, I think it's a little left of the bull's eye upon rereading the submission guidelines. Luckily, there's time to write a new story if necessary.

So, fingers crossed and all that.

Forty-Nine

I finished and submitted my forty-ninth short story of the year this evening. This one's a 4,600-word confession.

The seeds of "Seed"

Today on Charlotte Howard's blog I have a guest post about the three elements that came together when I wrote "Seed,"  my contribution to the anthology Fifty Shades of Green. Following my post is an excerpt from the story. Read "The Seeds of 'Seed'" here.

Forty-eight

I finished my forty-eighth short story of the year this evening, a 1,700-word Valentine's Day story.

38

I received my 38th acceptance of the year this morning, this time for a confession.

"Seed" excerpt

An excerpt of my story "Seed" accompanies "Dirty Hands, Dirty Minds," a guest post by the Fifty Shades of Green anthology publisher Sandra Knauf at Erotica for All. Read it here.

Pre-order Haunted

Haunted, a limited-edition hardcover anthology containing my story "Little Spring," is available for pre-order at http://boobooks.net/bookshop/haunted-pre-order/. The anthology is being published by Boo Books in England--official release date November 12--and I don't know if shipment to addresses outside the U.K. is an option.

Published 3x

My story "Under the Tree" appears in the December True Confessions and my stories "The Feast of Faith" and "Dad's Sexy Main Squeeze" appear in the December True Story.

37

I received my 37th acceptance of the year a few minutes ago. This one's for a 6,300-word confession.

Unexpected consequences

One unexpected consequence of using a new email program on a new computer after my old computer became unreliable is that I have unsubscribed from many email lists.

On the G5 I had established various rules that moved certain newsletters to one inbox and email from certain sources to another inbox and so on. Over several years, I had created dozens of rules to filter and sort my incoming email. Some of those emails I had either stopped reading or only scanned on a sporadic basis.

Because I have not yet established any rules to filter and sort incoming emails, I have realized how many non-spam but also non-essential emails I'd been receiving. Now, as I receive each daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, and sporadic email from all the mailing lists I had joined, I examine each one closely to determine why I subscribed (or if someone else subscribed me, the dirty rat!) and if being only the mailing list still holds value. Alas, many of them no longer do. So, I've unsubscribed from more than a dozen mailing lists during the past week and suspect there are several more unsubscriptions to come.

Eliminating unnecessary email means I should have fewer distractions when I'm at the computer. With luck, that will translate into increased productivity.

We'll see.

Forty-seven

I finished and submitted my forty-seventh short story of the year this morning. This one's a 2,000-word confession.

Forty-six

I finished and submitted my forty-sixth short story of the year a few minutes ago, a 5,200-word confession. On Columbus Day, using notes from February 2011, I wrote the bulk of the story. My computer bit the big one the following day, and only yesterday was I able to begin writing again. I completed the full draft yesterday evening and this afternoon gave it a final edit before submitting it.

Forty-five

I finished and submitted my forty-fifth story of the year a few minutes ago. This one's a 3,100-word confession that I had completed before the computer debacle and had only to do a final proofreading pass before sending it along.

The end of life as I know it

Two Fridays ago, my primary computer--a Macintosh G5 that has been a true workhouse ever since I purchased it in May 2005--died. It failed to boot up. I knew I would some day need to upgrade and had purchased an iMac last December with the intent of slowly porting everything over to the new computer. Of course, I'd transferred very little to the iMac.

I took the G5 to Best Buy where a member of the Geek Squad found nothing wrong. My computer booted up every time he tried. He suggested a thorough cleaning--I live in a house with cats and dogs and the inside of the G5 was a dusty, hairy mess--which I did with two cans of compressed air once I returned home.

The G5 worked fine all weekend--a three day weekend, and Columbus Day turned out to be one of my best writing days in several months--but refused to boot up again Tuesday morning.

I had backed up all my writing files as soon as the computer booted up Friday evening but had not backed up anything I had done during the three-day weekend. I had also never backed up all the other files on the G5, which ranged from my accounting software to editing projects for clients to personal photos. I knew then that I had no choice but to port everything over to the iMac if I could ever bring the G5 back to life.

Many hours of sleuthing on the web led me to several possible reasons for my G5's demise and potential solutions to resurrecting it. I brought it back to life--several times, much like using a defibrillator on a heart patient--and have copied from it all, or nearly all, of my important files.

Unfortunately, I have also been forced to upgrade software because what I was using was so old that it would not, or was unlikely to, run on the iMac.

So, in addition to the unplanned expense of purchasing new software, I've also consumed a great deal of time installing, configuring, and attempting to learn how to operate it.

This could have been an absolute disaster. As it is, it's mostly a serious irritation. I have not written anything since last Monday and I've done only a negligible amount of work for one of my key editing clients during this ordeal, which means I'll have to work extra-hard to catch up once I have all my software in order.

The biggest unresolved irritation is that I have found no way to port the contact list from my old email software to my new email software. So, it could be quite some time before I rebuild that list. I may have to wait until people contact me so that I can add them to the list and, thus, continue whatever level of communication we'd had before.

I'm certain there are many lessons to be learned here, especially about the value of regular system backups--an external drive for backing up the iMac is the next purchase on my list--but I'm too close to the action right now to know what they all are.

And maybe soon I can return to work, secure in the knowledge that I've weathered a storm.

Forty-Four

I finished and submitted my forty-fourth story of the year. This one's a 3,000-word confession.

36

I received my 36th acceptance of the year a few minutes ago. This one's for a bit of pulpish crime fiction.

35

I received my 35th acceptance of the year today, this time for a ghost story that will be included in an anthology of ghost stories published in England.

10 Things Every Girl Should Know Before She Dates A Writer

Number One is so, so true.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/nicholas-sansbury-smith/2014/09/10-things-every-girl-should-know-before-she-dates-a-writer/

When writing takes a left turn

I write short fiction in many genres, and I often know before I commit the first word to the page in which genre a new story will fit. On the few occasions when I don't know before I begin writing, I know before I've completed the first page. Every so often, though, a story takes a left turn on me.

I often write just enough of a story--a few hundred to a few thousand words--to know where a story is headed, and then set it aside if it is seasonally inappropriate or if there is no market for it. An example would be the setting aside of a Christmas story in January, when it is far too soon to submit, in favor of working on an April Fool's Day story or a Mother's Day story.

When I return to work on the set-aside stories, I can usually pick up where I left off and finish them as originally intended, and that was my intent with a story I recently finished.

I had written the first 1,500 words of a confession about a woman who discovers that her deceased father had a long-term relationship with a woman who wasn't her mother, and my intent was to have the first-person narrator learn that she had a half-sister that she'd never known.

When I resumed work on the partially written story, I realized the narrator's father's secret was much deeper and darker than an affair and a second child. As I continued writing, my confession became a mystery, and, by the time I finished a complete draft, I had a great story poorly told.

I had to work my way through the initial draft to ensure that all of the clues fell into place properly, that the confession style of the first third was rewritten to conform to the mystery style of the last two-thirds, and I had to research some historical information to ensure that what I claimed happened in the story either did or, at least, could have happened when I said it did.

The finished story doesn't much resemble its confession rootstock, but it does retain two key elements of confession: The story is written in first-person by a female narrator.

The story is now sitting in the electronic slush pile of a mystery magazine, and I'm eager to learn if my letting the story take a left turn was a trip worth taking.

34

I received my 34th acceptance of the year this evening, this time for a confession.

Forty-three

I finished and submitted my forty-third short story of the year this afternoon. This one's a 4,100-word mystery.

Published

My story "I Tried to Help" appears in the November issue of True Confessions.

32, 33

I received my 32nd and 33rd acceptances of the year this evening, both for confessions.

Forty-two

I finished and submitted my forty-second short story of the year this evening. This one's a 5,700-word confession.

Published

My erotic romance "Homecoming" appears in the anthology Rookies. Though the anthology was released in July, my copies didn't arrive until this afternoon.

Published 4x

Today's mail brought two anthologies and a magazine, all containing my stories.

"Dancehall Cowboy" and "The Hoarder at Halloween" appear in the October True Confessions.

My erotic romance "Soaring" appears in the anthology Active Duty.

And my erotic gardening story "Seed," mentioned earlier when it was released as a stand-alone story for Kindle, appears in the anthology Fifty Shades of Green.

Forty-one

I finished and submitted my forty-first short story of the year, a 2,700-word confession I started writing in July 2005.

31

I received my 31st acceptance of the year today. This one's for the essay I submitted Saturday.

30

I received my 30th acceptance of the year earlier this evening.

Essay

I completed and submitted a short essay today. I don't count and track these the way I do short stories, but I think it's my second of the year.

Forty

I finished and submitted my fortieth short story of the year this evening, a 3,800-word confession.

Last year I was not as productive as I strive to be, only producing forty short stories the entire year. With this story I have matched last year's total output, and I've exceeded last year's total word count by 500 words.

My goal each year is to receive 52 acceptances (an average of one each week), and most years I have to produce slightly more than 52 stories to achieve that goal. As August winds down, I seem to be on track with both production and sales.

Published

My story "Becoming a Survivor" appears in the October issue of True Story.

29

Another acceptance arrived a few minutes ago, my 29th of the year.

27, 28

I woke this morning to find two acceptances awaiting me, both for an erotica anthology to be published in England.

Published

My short romance "The Thief of Hearts" appears in the August 21 issue of the Australian magazine That's Life! 

Published

My story "Moon Doggie and the Nightsurfers at Hammerhead Beach," an erotic story about gay surfing vampires, appears in the just-published anthology Until the Sun Rises.

Published

My story "Seed," scheduled for publication in the anthology Fifty Shades of Green, has been released as a stand-alone short story for Kindle. Check it out here.

Thirty-nine

I finished and submitted my thirty-ninth short story this morning, a 2,400-word bit of crime fiction.

I met an editor at ArmadilloCon a few weeks ago and he asked if I'd send something his direction. This story is the result.

Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight

I finished and submitted my thirty-sixth, thirty-seventh, and thirty-eighth stories of the year this evening. All were Christmas confessions.

26

I received my 26th acceptance of the year this morning, this time for a confession.

Radio Interview

Yesterday, I was interviewed on a radio program. The interview was recorded and is now available here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/attunemagazineradio/2014/07/31/personal-empowerment-with-michael-bracken

I've not yet listened to it, so I've no idea how well I did, but it certainly was fun.

25

I received my 25th acceptance of the year this morning. An Australian women's magazine accepted a short romance I wrote back in 2009.

Published 2x

My story "Hot for the Teacher" appears in the September True Confessions, and my story "Resisting Temptation" appears in the September True Story.

24

I received my 24th acceptance of the year this morning while I was still at ArmadilloCon. Announcing a sale that very morning while introducing myself at an 11 a.m. panel was kinda cool. This one's for a confession.

23

I received my 23rd acceptance of the year today. This one's for a bit of hardboiled crime fiction.

Reviewed

Lucy at Hearts on Fire reviews Active Duty and has this to say about my contribution to the anthology:

"Soaring – Michael Bracken Rated 4.5 Probably my favorite of the anthology and one of the sweetest. Wedding! This one is sweet and light. I loved that it begins with their wedding, gives insight on their courtship (a bookstore where he’s reading gay mystery anthology, awesome!) and then ends with their honeymoon. It was lovely."

Read the entire review here.

22

I received my 22nd acceptance of the year. This one's a romance.

21

I received my 21st acceptance of the year this evening, this time for a confession.

Convention appearance

I’ll be at ArmadilloCon in Austin, Texas, this weekend (July 25-27), participating in three panels about writing:

Sa1000E Watch Out for that Plothole!
Sat 10:00 AM-11:00 AM
Our panelists give you tips and advice on fixing the plotholes in your works.

Sa1400F Before You Edit
Sat 2:00 PM-3:00 PM
This is a discussion of minor edits you can make before you really dig in. Find/Replace is your friend.

Su1100F Overhauling a Character
Sun 11:00 AM-Noon
Now that you have written a book, go back and rewrite your main character.

If you’re there, say howdy.

For more info about the convention, visit http://www.armadillocon.org/

Guest post

My guest post at The Novel Approach, "How 'Soaring' Took Off," discusses how I came to write "Soaring" for Active Duty and includes an except from the beginning of the story.

If you leave a reply to my guest post, you will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of Active Duty.

Reviewed

Brandilyn reviews Active Duty at Prism Book Alliance and has this to say about "Soaring," my contribution to the anthology:

"Soaring is the story of a wedding made possible because of the repeal of DADT. An airman and his banker lover meet under the restrictions of DADT and have to find a way to make their relationship work. We start and end on the wedding day and look at the beginnings of the relationship in between. It was an interesting and sweet tale."

 Read the entire review here.