I get to announce that I have a story forthcoming from Galaxy’s Edge Magazine! As of yet I do not know what issue it will be in or when it will be published. I will definitely be linking to it when it comes out.

The story in question, Cat Lady, was written during my time at Viable Paradise, though it’s been revised a few times since. It’s my first professional sale and I shed a few tears when I opened the acceptance email. If you’re curious about what qualifies a market as pro, semipro, or token the SFWA has a guide here. The gist of it is it depends on how much the market pays, how long they’ve been publishing, and how big of a readership they have.

I have been submitting my stories to pro markets since 2015 and have racked up over a 100 rejections split between 7 stories. Cat Lady was rejected 17 times before Galaxy’s Edge accepted it. That is about average from my understanding. There were several times I felt I was so close to making a pro sale and other times when it seemed like the impossible dream. This doesn’t mean that I won’t get any more rejections, in fact I’ve gotten 3 in time the since. But it’s one more hurtle cleared. I get to call myself a professional. Even if never sell another story I will always have one professional credit to my name. I’m tempted to order a little pin or plaque to remind myself of that, but I think having the issue in my hands will be enough.

In other news, in a few short weeks I’ll be attending 4th Street Fantasy Convention for the second time. A few of my favorite people in the world will also be there and I can’t wait to see them all again. And celebrate the hurdles they’ve cleared since we last saw each other.

Finally, here we have another Fraggle. For such simple designs they really are hard to capture in 2D.