Wow!
How do we get more readers to notice your polished, professional, riveting and awesome prose?
You nail the POV of a woman, a mother, a wife - and the dawning horror! - it reminds me of the gradual realization of that wife in King's "The Shining." No monster is as scary as a husband going insane.
That Frankenstein-ish scene. OMG. “It worked, Lisa, I brought him back. I brought our son back." OMG.
It reminds me of a nightmare I once had about my dad reviving the corpse of his father, my grandpa, in the attic. Grandpa arose and looked right at me. I woke up fast.
It may be that for Steemit/Hive readers, your stories are daunting in length ("too many words") - and it's certain to me that you need to publish an anthology of your short stories. Most publishers avoid anthologies (no money in them unless you're already as famous as King) but your fiction is first-rate, and you need to get your stories out to more readers. I've fallen out of touch with magazines and editors. Perihelion Science Fiction only accepted hard sci-fi, and it doesn't appear Sam Bellotto Jr will revive the ezine anytime soon. He's in poor health. Another editor I'd have recommended to you, Carrol Fix, has retired due to poor health, and her small press has closed. She published two author's I'd recommended--one, Brian Biswas, now has an anthology of his "Twilight Zone" -ish short stories. And he may be looking for a new publisher to reprint it.
You really are a pro I'd recommend to a publisher, if only I still knew any. :)
The Ink Well is fortunate to claim you as one of our own.
This is the book - only 99 cents for the Kindle version - download a sample, and you can see how your stories might look in anthology form. :)
Kewl. Just noticed my review is excerpted and quoted on the page!
Thank you so much for your kind words! I feel a bit overwhelmed! :)
I think this story is probably the best of the ones I wrote in the last couple of weeks. I enjoyed working on it a lot.
I agree with your points about my work being a bit too long for Hive to find general readers unfortunately. People are more used to short bursts than long 3.000+ words stories on the internet. It's a bit regrettable, but it is what it is.
As for publishing, it's really tough to be honest. I've been thinking about an anthology for a while, but I still feel I need a few more stories that truly shine. I think most of my work is average at best, apart from a few who are truly good. I'm also a bit wary about self-publishing, since I'd rather not throw out something that's subpar and editing also costs a ton of money. So that's a bit of a problem.
A good point are magazine submissions though that you touched on. There are a few places out there that are interesting and even a few horror themed magazines. So I might try my luck with them and see what happens.
Again thank you very much!
You're very welcome. I wish you well with the submissions - and as for the editing, proofreading, beta-reading, you can try online workshops that cost no money, just time - trading edits with other writers. Ah, but time is money... I used to spend thousands of hours of my life on unpaid edits, and the edits I got in return were often not useful to me. "Try killing off the daughter to bring the mom and dad closer to each other. Change the heroine's name to Gertrude, or something more interesting than Cecelia." Then the anti-Oxford-comma people, then the "was" + -ing and POV violation police.... ugh. Finding a compatible editor is just daunting. If you get ready to publish an anthology, let me know...