I have a bunch of pending stories and it’s lowkey really stressful to keep track of so it’s nice that this is one less thing to worry about!
Story: The Cave of the Ocean Lord
Published in: Merganser Magazine [web]
Length: ~1,000 words
Brief synopsis:
How the story came to be: I wrote this for a flash fiction contest over on Codex! I think it’s actually the first piece I’ve ever written for one of those contests (and I was still quite new to flash fiction in general).
The contests give different prompts, and the one I used for that round was “What would be on a blank area of a map?” I then started flipping through my big pile of story ideas to see if something matched, and that’s how this came to be!
Specifically, I wanted to write about eel dragons. I loooooove eels (they’re so funny) and their anatomy is kind of weird. What would a fully aquatic dragon be like? So, here we are!
PUBLISHING THE STORY
Relative Confidence Level Before Submitting: 6, maybe? Like it’s good, but it’s not interesting (at least in the way that you see the kinds of stories that get published, especially by big places). So I knew it would get published at some point, but probably not for much!
Rejections before finding a home: 11 (which is quite low!)
The eventual home: Merganser Magazine. This was actually my first pro rate sale (where the pay was in c/word and not a flat fee that mathed into a pro rate), which was a big surprise! I thought it would be stories that I felt were a lot stronger. But that’s just how it goes, sometimes! I’m happy it found a good home, so I hope you check it out! 🙂
