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The next chapter starts with the beginning of 2005. Now, I know I said that “They Really Exist” was the first story, and it was to be actually published and the first one to be read that year. But at the beginning of 2005 there were two stories, both of them dark paranormal romances, accepted for a dark paranormal romance anthology. I was excited. In fact, “Shadow Lover,” was the first of all the tales in that anthology accepted. I got the news in an email January 1st. Now anyone who has read Coming Together: Under Fire published by Phaze Books knows that “Shadow Lover” is included in that anthology. Except before it ever made its way into Under Fire, it was accepted for this other anthology, besides my dark urban fantasy, “To Teach an Ancient God.” Yes, that “To Teach an Ancient God,” that is now available as a free download from All Romance eBooks. Like I said, both stories were to be included in this anthology. And I was in great company, many of the other stories by well-known authors.

But as the year went by, there was no publishing date set by the publisher. Like all writers, I didn’t thought further about it, but went straight back to writing and submitting other stories. One of these submissions I had made into a collection of horror stories. I had discovered this one publisher who was opened to novel and short story collections. I sent the basic query and he asked for the first three chapters, so I sent three stories. The editor apparently liked them and requested the rest of the manuscript. I felt giddy, like a child promised a trip to Disneyland. Surely, this was the turnaround for me. There was some light at the end of the dark tunnel. The light was false, only a will-‘o-the-wisp. That request ended up as a rejection.

Not feeling down in the mouth about it, I took those stories and submitted them separately to various magazines and anthologies. They came back, rejected. But the thought of those two accepted stories in that anthology that sooner or later would be released kept me plugging on.

I then took this one flash fiction and rewrote it into a science fiction. (For those curious of to what a flash fiction is, it’s a very short story that can be up to 1,000 words.) I submitted it earlier to one online magazine that had liked it, but only accepted science fiction and fantasy, not horror. I got an acceptance and contract from AlienSkinMagazine.com for it! The next month it was available to readers online.

With that minor success, I wrote my very first, real erotic romance story. “The Curse” was what I titled it. It was a historical fantasy, where a young woman had been chose due to a lottery to be sacrificed to a dragon that had been raiding her village. A dragon that was a knight cursed at night to become a dragon, thanks to a witch. Since it was very erotic, I decided on a pseudonym. Sapphire Phelan was born. Sapphire as the sapphire was my birth stone and Phelan, which was Celtic name that meant wolf, was a name I liked. A magazine that went out as PDF subscriptions had accepted it. I was on a roll!

Not! That magazine folded and I received the rights to my story back. But it had been published. I had three others accepted, one of them online. That was motivation to me. And now I had a pseudonym for my romance stories and I wanted to let the publisher of that anthology know, so I could go by that, instead of Pamela K. Kinney. At this time, December arrived and passed into 2006. But before I could contact the editor of the author name change, the word came. No, not the release date of the anthology. The word that the publishing house was closing its doors and the rights to all the novels and the stories in the anthology were reverting back to the authors. So, here I had these two homeless stories, with no home for them.

This chapter ends with a sad note and so we will turn the page to the next chapter of this book.