Short Stories

In addition to web novels, David writes a number of short stories. Most of these are sadly rejected, but that is just a part of the process. Anyone who’s read Stephen King’s book, On Writing, knows all about “The Nail.” Well, my nail is a spreadsheet, and it slowly gets longer. As of this moment I have submitted some combination of my 33 short stories 123 times. 5 stories have been accepted, 95 submissions have been rejected, and 23 submissions currently wait in limbo.

Still, there have been a few successes, and those are worth celebrating.

  • Red Skies was picked up by a vampire anthology, To Hunt and to Hold. It was not only my first acceptance, but the only story I’ve written to get picked up on the first try. It tells the tale of a vampire hunter’s attempt to breach the fortress of a vampire queen.
  • Overtime was accepted by CreepyPod. It’s a tale of surrealist horror that may or may not have something to do with AI. I’ve looked, through their podcasts, and can’t find it, or I’d link it to you directly.
  • Flying Blind is a post apoc story of sailing the salt flats after the world as we know it is gone. The world might have ended, but it turns out work still goes on. This will be published soon in Psybomb survivors, a post apoc anthology.
  • No Strings Attached, or as I like to think of it, the haunted fuckboi is the story of a bad man who somehow gets worse than he deserves. It’s coming out in an anthology of erotic horror in February. My contribution at least, isn’t graphic. Its hard on the horror, soft on the erotic. A late night skinimax film if you will.
  • Doll’s House is a short about a ghost girl and her haunted house. It’s unsettling, and PG13, but fun. It will be published soon in a charity anthology, The Beast under your Bed.

The rest of the stories? Well, I won’t burden you with all of the also rans. I do plan on taking some of the rejects that never find a home and narrating them at some point, but that won’t be for a while. It takes a long time to get a story rejected five or ten times before I give up on it.