[Forward ]

To start off my week of blogging, I like to talk about my very first time of being published. I had been writing since I was eight-years old, making up stories about animals, aliens from other planets, and scary monsters tales, too. But it wasn’t until I was in high school that I started to write poetry. It was a different way to tell a story. I found that not rhyming was the easiest way to do poetry for me.

My parents gave me a portable typewriter one Christmas and I took typing one semester at El Cajon High School to be able to use it. I think my mother hoped that this typewriter and the typing class would lead me to an office job when I graduated. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the speed necessary to be a good secretary. But typing was a much better way to write stories and poetry, since my own penmanship was terrible. It enabled me to put down all the ideas that crowded inside my mind in much faster way and where I could or anyone else could read what I wrote.

In 1972, when I was seventeen, I discovered about this poetry magazine, Hyacinths and Biscuits, in Los Angeles. I wasn’t even sure that they would accept my poems. You see, I had an older sister who had penned a mystery when she was a teenager and submitted it to a writing contest held at a library. The winner would get her novel published. When it was found out that she was a teenager, she only received an honorable mention, even though they said her manuscript was good. So, I was worried that if they ever found out I was only seventeen, I might get rejected.

Taking a chance, I chose three poems, “The Horse,” “Sands of Time,” and “The Leopard,” and sent them off by mail. I could go on and say I got a rejection, even three rejections, but I didn’t. All three were accepted for publication and the magazine paid me five dollars per poem in a fifteen dollar check. That was a lot of money to a teenager back in 1972. They weren’t the last poems accepted for that magazine. I had two more accepted that year.

Did that mean I was on my way? I wish I could say it was so, but no.

Except, for the rare poem here or there in poetry anthologies, that was it. Did I try submitting short stories too? No. I had this plan in my mind that I would do poetry first, then after a while, short stories, and eventually, a novel.

It wasn’t until I was married and with a young son, that I began writing short stories and submitting them. In 1985, we moved from California to Chesterfield, Virginia. Maybe this would be the time my time would come. Nope. Rejections, rejections, rejections. I could paper a wall in our apartment with them.

Then I bought this magazine, True Story, and I noticed that they wanted non-fiction submissions about real people. A friend of mine, Kathy Malone, had helped me when I needed it the most back in California. I wrote an article about her and submitted it to the magazine. I forgot about it and went back to writing fiction. Weeks later, a letter came back, telling me that my piece had been accepted.

Did that mean a break for me? I wish I could say yes. I submitted story after story again, mainly horror. Rejections after rejections came back, mocking me. One of my stories though, "Werewolf for Hire," a flash fiction piece of 394 words, was almost accepted. A week after I received a rejection for it from the magazine, another one arrived a week later in my mailbox from them. In a letter, the editor told me that the magazine had been sold and that was why my story hadn't been accepted, as they weren't allowed to do so at the time. But I was told to check back later and resubmit then, when things had settled down. I never did resubmit though. Years later, I did submit "Werewolf for Hire" to an online publication,
ScienceFictionfantasyHorror.com in 2006. It did accept the flash fiction. Another cool fact about my story was it also took the #10 spot of top ten of Preditors and Editors Horror Short Story 2006.

Finally, my first story was accepted, but not until 2005. It was a science fiction flash fiction piece, “They Really Exist,” published by AlienSkinMagazine.com. After that, slow but sure other short stories got accepted, almost as equally as rejected.
But that’s not the end of it for me. No good tale should just end at the first chapter. Otherwise it would be a short story then.

Pamela K. Kinney aka Sapphire Phelan