More on the unofficial good news - stories hopefully will be published soon

I've had contact with Randy's partner, Tom, and so far things are looking up and I've been put "in the pot" for an editor's position that will need to be filled (and yes it pays but those details haven't been worked out yet). So fingers crossed I get this position, plus get my stories published. I have to have a core of 15-20 right now but hopefully by the end of January or February I have all 50 of them and I think I finally have the idea that will work for the stories (thanks to my good friend Batya) - so who knows by the end of January - you may see me in your kids' schools supplementing the social studies curricula.

Anyway - I'm posting another call for submission for the 5-minute mysteries and hopefully some of my readers will submit stories -



Randy O'Kane posted a looking for 5-minute mysteries ont the Short Mystery Fiction Society forum on yahoo. I have had contact with both Randy and his partner, Tom - who works for an educational publisher. This looks to be an excellent opportunity if you can write very short stories - no more than about 4 or so pages (1500 words is probably too much as far as reading time goes)



Anyway if you are interested - here is the information that was posted and remember even though they are looking to use these in the schools, doesn't mean that they have to lack the usual information you need in a mystery.



--- In Shortmystery@yahoogroups.com, "Randy" wrote:

I hope this is an acceptable post on this site. My company is
currently in the process of
launching a new web site which will be utilizing short mysteries in
an educational setting.
We are currently looking to find writers to submit stories for
publication as we need about
200 stories. We are hoping to work with organizations such as yours
to find qualified
authors to submit stories. If there is anything that you can do to
advise and/or assist us,
we would be greatly appreciative. Thank you in advance for your
assistance.

Our submission guidelines:

1. We ALWAYS include the author's name with each and every use of
the story.
2. Only previously unpublished stories can be used.
3. Given that we will be using the short stories both for
electronic and audio purposes, we
will need full copyright.
4. We pay upon the story being scheduled for publication.
5. We pay $50 for each short mystery used.
6. Once we have accepted one of your stories, you are eligible to
upload other work to be
sold on our affiliate site.

Submission guidelines:
1. Stories must be about 1500 words.
2. Stories should be written for the sixth to eighth grade reading level. While stories
outside of this range might be purchased, preference will be given to those that fall within
it. In Microsoft Word, there is the ability to check for grade level prior to submission
3. The story needs to have the main portion of the story which includes at least 5 clues
and at least 3 suspects as well as the solution section.
4. We want to give the authors as much freedom and latitude to be creative as possible in
terms of theme, etc. Note that we will be using these stories in schools so keep that in
mind when dealing with sex, drugs and violence. It is okay to say someone died (that is
the who done it), but no need to get highly graphic unless it is crucial to the story.
5. No red herrings


Randy will be accepting submissions at the above address. The way this system is going to work is by ranking the readers - how soon you solve the mystery based on the clues and info provided in each line so make each word count. I am currently working a different aspect of the mysteries in that I've been wanting to do something sort of like "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" with each state as the mystery place. So when I get my stories worked up, they won't be murder mysteries but they will be able to supplement the school curricula in social studies and state history information - so I'm gearing my stories to 4th and 5th grade levels.



Hope to see lots of stories from here and the SMFS forum. I think they are going to try to do a new story a day so definitely need lots of stories. Good luck everyone. - see you in the postings - E :)

Unofficial good news

I've been holding off posting this but I think I can post now, since I really did need to update my blog and put some good news around. A guy came on the Short Mystery Fiction yahoo forum and posted a link looking for stories, wanting to keep them about 1500 words, and to keep them at a 6th grade reading level or so. They are using the stories to put on the 5-minute mystery site (which will be up soon) and so I emailed him after the posting hit the forums. I told him my story idea of using each state as the mystery and writing a bunch of children's stories. I have all the information gathered and this idea has been brewing for a couple of years now (since Train of Clues won a shared second place on Armchair Interviews' fan mystery contest for Silence of the Loons, which came out at the time of the contest. I had that story edited by a professional editor, asking for advice on how to expand the story out, how to make a series of the stories, et cetera. She gave me some wonderful advice. So I've changed my mind about a dozen times about how to go about coming up with 50 stories that are different yet similar and getting the kids from one place to another without the stories feeling like fill-in the blank type things or cookie cutter stories.

I received an email from Randy saying that his partner, who is either an educational publisher or works for an educational publisher, was very excited about my story ideas. He asked if I would give him my phone number to pass to his partner so he could call me. I completed the first story Wednesday night during the last few hours of NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) and had a few more questions, so I emailed him again and put a little, btw - I haven't heard from your partner yet but I know he's probably busy and all. His partner, Tom, called me Thursday. We were on the phone for over an hour discussing my ideas and so my kind of like Where in the World is Carmen San Diego stories are being looked at a complete "Geography Mystery package" to be put in the schools, kind of as a supplement to the curricula in social studies, ELA and maybe science. Now I have to write the stories. I've written two for the 5-minute mystery site but the second one kind of sucks. I need to work on it and then write the other 20 (starting with about 20 to have on hand and then will go from there) so that we can talk more than just 5-minute mysteries.

So maybe within the next couple of years, these stories will be expanded out and will be in the schools complementing the curricula around the United States. Good news for me and this will keep me quite busy from the way Tom was talking. Let's just hope I can keep up the pace and get them turned around like he wants.

GOOD NEWS AND SEMI-GOOD NEWS

Butterfly Halves was at the #5 spot last week on http://www.fictionwise.com/, Echelon Press's page (on the left side, scan down towards the bottom, where it says browse and a list of ways to browse, go under publishers), find Echelon Press and then you can see where stories are sitting on that board), and this week with the new additions and updates, it is still at #5. This may mean no sales but the books behind me didn't sell anything either or maybe one sale, enough to keep me in that postion, even with everyone above me selling - hope it means the latter - sales are good. But since this is the last week of the accounting period, I would like to see more sales, especially since I'm running a contest - see previous post.

The Tulip Kiss had been at #18 and today, it's up to #15 - so woohooo - means maybe one copy sold, enough to bring it up six slots.

I'm trying to come up with an idea for a contest for The Tulip Kiss, something I can do as a giveaway but am not coming up with anything right off the top of my head. If anyone has any ideas of what I can do as giveaways for the contest, I'm open to suggestions - Bring it on - E :)