Murky Depths #3 (Link is over there - to the left!) is now available at their website. Among the wild and vile works that make the magazine so great is my piece "What's Yours Is Mine". THis is my second story to hit print and my first international sale! Check it out if you enjoy engaging art that matches the prose.

I'm still in the "I've got a blog - now what the hell do I do with it" stage. Somehow I'll figure it out but until then...

I've only started reading again. I went into a fiction-stooper for about three months and didn't read anything deeper than a drive-thru menu. That sucks. So I broke down and bought a few new books. The first is S.M. Peter's Whitechapel Gods. It's a dark fantasy/ steampunk set in Victorian England and so far is a fun read. There's a dizzying array of characters to keep track of but I'll manage.

Then one of the writers over at Absolute Write was experiencing a "language" issue. She was told by an agent, in a polite manner, that since she was from South Africa there was a bit of a language barrier readers might run into. She used certain slang and jargons in her Urban Fantasy that were natural for her but not the rest of the world. So I offered to read some of her work, seeing how I was already into a story wrought with ninteenth century colloquialisms.

After reading a few pages I was amazed. What little local tidbits she threw in fit with the flow of the story and didn't leave me scratching my head wondering "what the hell did she mean?" Her story had life. Characters took stage with all the energy and fears they should. Her prose were sharp, punchy, and quite captivating. Now, I wonder what was the agents problem?

Fantasy stories have been notorious for using words and terms and phrases that were anything but common place. Look at the Sci-Fantasy DUNE - it came with a glossary! All I can figure is that it's getting increasingly more difficult to sell work unless it fits a perfect formula and is different enough from others without being too different.

The quest for publication has gotten a lot steeper!