I got another story coming out next week so I’ll send out the email then lol
Story: Empty
Published in: Scrawl Place [web]
Length: ~500 words
Brief synopsis:
How the story came to be: My city does an art show every year. It’s not a huge city, so there aren’t a ton of artists who submit, but there’s always a wide range of styles and materials, at least. Last year, they advertised an โekphrastic poetry workshop.โ What the hell, I thought, lets do it. It’s free!
I do write (and have published) some poetry, but under a pen name (because y’all don’t need to be hearing about my childhood trauma in cringey verse). But I’m always open to trying new things, especially if it can inspire my writing. The teacher gave a brief history on ekphrasis and ways of doing it, was pretty neat. We were sent off to look at the art and write.
There was one piece, [“Lola and Pido” by Jayson Manzano]. It has various Bay Area things, but it’s purple and, oddly, Baja Blast blue. And all I could really think about was Taco Bell, and I then thought of that one painting (you know the one, it’s the featured image for this post). Soโฆ.I wrote a flash fic. About a piece of art that wasn’t even there. Luckily, we weren’t forced to share with the class, so no one would know how much I failed the assignment lol. But I did run home to polish it into what you see now!
PUBLISHING THE STORY
Relative Confidence Level Before Submitting: 8.5. It is exactly the kind of piece Taco Bell Quarterly is for
Rejections before finding a home: 7. Even though this was really written for TBQ, I needed to wait for it to open (and I knew it would take them forever to get back to me).
The eventual home: Scrawl Place, which is about stories based/set in real world locations you can actually visit. I told TBQ that I got the acceptance but they were free to have it as a reprint…and they haven’t gotten back to me…or anyone else in the slush pile… so lol.
