Last year I concocted a short-short story about a man strolling into a nearby woods by the light of a full moon, and beginning to feel uneasy amidst forest sounds.
I began sending it off – and 
collecting rejection slips. Finally, I read it to the poets and writers group that gathers at Seabury. They all agreed that my two early paragraphs describing the forest were cumbersome and unnecessary , and must discourage further reading. I excised those paragraphs, did a bit more tweaking, and began sending it off again.
Within days, email brought an acceptance slip — of the old version!
The editor agreed that the new version was better – and it’s out now, in Macrame Literary Magazine.
To read it, go ==>>here, and scroll down to fiction.
Acknowledging native Americans
As I finished a short essay on the California-Nevada high desert – with a nod to the Paiute cowboy with whom I once worked 
cattle there — I came across a possible market: the Watershed Review at the California State University at Chico, 200 miles north of our ranch. Its editors wrote that they are “on lands that were originally occupied by the first people of this area, the Mechoopda, and we recognize their distinctive spiritual relationship with this land. . . .”
I have seldom been so sure that the editors of a magazine would like what I wrote. I was right: My Among the Bristlecones is out today. Read it ==>at Watershed Review
Solving the Mensa puzzle
Calliope is the quarterly literary magazine of American Mensa’s 
Writers Special Interest Group, which makes it a super-demanding market, with circulation in almost every state and a half-dozen countries.
Although I’ve never even tried to join (Mensa is open only to the top 2 percent of IQs), I’ve submitted to them occasionally – but only my best work. I’m flattered that they’ve accepted three of my four offerings. The latest, Jigsaw Puzzle, is just out; you can read it ==>>at their website
Fantasy: Lay it on thicker
An astonishing number of magazines invite short stories that are fantasies or science fiction, genres at which I’ve never been very good.
But the idea came to me one 
day of a shy older woman who moved into a retirement community such as the one in which I live, hesitant about getting to know the place, but is given a boost by an ancient aunt who unexpectedly arrives. In describing her, I made her sound a bit like Mary Poppins.
In the ensuing weeks, I got no nibbles, so I tweaked it a bit, making the aunt explicitly a Mary Poppins figure. That did it: “Aunt Carrie” is out now in Commuter Lit, a Canadian e-zine that specializes in short stories that can be read on the way to or from work, and welcomes “sci fi, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance . . ..”
You can read it => online
Patience is rewarded
Time was when a writer sent a story off to a magazine in an oversized envelope, enclosing a stamped return envelope, and waited months for a reply; when it came back as a rejection, one sent it off to another magazine.
It’s easier nowadays: one submits electronically, and sending to several simultaneously is usually acceptable. But it’s still uphill work: many 
literary magazines publish more poems than fiction, often as few as two or three stories in each edition. Most receive hundreds of submissions, so even the best are often declined. Most rejections come in boilerplate language, but I find occasional editors writing a personal note, typically saying my story just didn’t mesh with others accepted, and urging that I submit again.
Usually, when rejections of a story near double digits, I take a hard look, and often do some significant rewriting to improve it. But sometimes I don’t see much I can do to make a story really better, so I persist in sending it off.
“The Emissary” is such a story: A wise old woman embraces the wife his son is divorcing, with an unexpected conclusion. I had 16 rejection notes when the editors of the respected Massachusetts-based Meat for Tea, The Valley Review accepted it.
Unlike many others, Meat for Tea won’t let you read it online; they want you to buy a copy for $12. But you CAN read it free ==>here at my blog:
Birds won’t wait for ursine slumber
As fall approaches each year, I begin thinking about putting out grain and suet for the birds; there is still time to help 
some of them fatten up for a long flight to winter quarters. And every year I chafe at having to wait until the nearby bears hibernate.
When Masque & Spectacle, a twice-a-year literary magazine now in its tenth year, announced its interest in “prose that has a sense of poetry,” I sent them a little essay on the problem. They liked it: My “Bears and Birds” is now published online. You can read it ==>at their website
Memories from my teens
There may be a bit of autobiography in most works of fiction; we write best about what we know best. In any case, there is a lot in my short story “Inventions”, just published in OpenDoor Magazine on the theme of Labyrinth.
I’ve changed names, and my narrator’s life is fictional in most respects, but the description of his boyhood pal’s invention of an electric lawnmower is straight from my vivid memory, as is the huge sled in its shower of sparks.
I never got to any of my high school reunions: the folks moved from New Jersey to Long Island to Ohio during my college years. But if I’d been able to keep up with my real-life boyhood pal, I fear the real-life story would have ended as I’ve ended the story.
I’m sorry the OpenDoor creators are giving it up, but understand; a lot of hard work for little if any profit. But I’ll miss them; this is the fourth piece of mine they’ve published it. Find my Inventions ==>>online and scroll down to page 69.
Or, easier, read it ==>>right here
Remembering a hectic year
The Writer’s Workout, which publishes a quarterly
literary journal titled WayWords, has published four of my stories and essays in the last four years. When they invited submissions for a new edition on the theme “nostalgia”, I cast my memory back three-quarters of a century to the year I worked harder than any time before or since — and had more satisfaction and fun.
You can buy and read it in print or Kindle at ==>>Amazon
Or can more easily (and free!) read it at my blog, ==>>right here
Exploring loneliness
In conjuring up story ideas, I find myself exploring loneliness among seniors — a condition familiar to many of my retirement-community 
neighbors, although few talk about it.
I’m not sure how the idea came to me, but I imagined a man who was devastated when his wife divorced him years ago, who now reads of her death and wants to attend her memorial service. The story finally came together as “Parting Thoughts”. I sent it off to several magazines, including one called Discretionary Love that published my “Deja vu” last year. They liked this new one, too; it’s the lead short story in their May display; you can read it ==>there
Beware: Old Man with Chainsaw
Cosmic Daffodil Journal, an online magazine that published my “Outliving Sin” earlier this year, invited very short (600-word) stories with a Yin-Yang theme: exploring opposites.
That brought to mind a very real test of opposites here at Seabury where I live: Should our walking paths lead us through a pristine city park, or through a natural woods with dead and dying trees that give life to birds and other wildlife?
My offering, “A Sawyer’s Education”, is published this month. You can read it at Yin & Yang Ebook (scroll to the bottom of page, then to page 89)
OR, to avoid navigating cyberspace, read it ==>>right here
