Well, I shopped around a story about a zombie until I had collected enough rejections to wallpaper my office. Okay, not nearly that many, but quite a few. Most were positive and of the rare “personal rejection” variety.

For those not familiar with the concept, a “personal” rejection is when an editor takes the time to personally tell you they won’t buy your stuff as opposed to sending a form letter or big red rubber rejection stamp. This personal attention can be good or bad. It can sometimes be an invitation to take a sledgehammer to your keyboard and find a different calling. Other times, it can be words of encouragement.

Good news is that for Robert the Zombie, it was all about the encouragement. It left me stoked, but unsure what to do. The editors enjoyed it, but often, humor is a tough sell. It can be very subjective and frankly, there aren’t a lot of humor publications out there anymore.

So, I had an idea.

I’ve been wanting to try my hand at self-publication for a while now. It’s not something I would leap into with a really big project like my novel. I want to shop that around first with publishers and see what kind of reactions I receive. I truly believe it’s better off in the hands of one of the big players. But a smaller side project might make an ideal starting point for some self-pub experimentation.

My plan is to write an entire series of humorous monster stories and include them in a collection. I’ll make a few available on the site as I make progress and hope to have eight to twelve stories ranging from the lighthearted to the laugh out loud funny.  So far I’ve got plans to cover Dracula, Bigfoot, Dragons, Poltergeists, and of course, Zombies.

Any requests?

Categories: Articles

Tags: anthology, humor, monsters, short stories