The author organizes a seminar on publishing
October 11, 2022 – DENTON – You wrote a short story and you feel pretty good about it. Friends told you how awesome it was and you really should get it published.
How do you do this?
The answers can be found at a Publishing Seminar, featuring author Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam on October 18, 2022, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., at TWU Student Union in Hubbard Hall Auditorium. The event is sponsored by TWU’s Department of Language, Culture and Gender Studies.
Stufflebeam, with over 90 short stories published to their credit, will discuss the basics of publishing. The seminar will be followed by a Q&A session, and Stufflebeam will be signing copies of its short story, glorious demons.
“There will be a lot about submitting work and managing rejections,” Stufflebeam said of the seminar. “I teach a lot of new writers, so I did this seminar on when you first submit your work to magazines and the practical details of some online tools you can use.”
Another topic will be identifying publications looking for short stories.
“There’s a huge market there,” Stufflebeam said. “There are fewer magazines paying, and they don’t pay anymore like they paid in the 60s and 70s. You can’t sustain yourself as a short story writer or even as a novel writer, but it There are many markets that will pay you. You can definitely make money from your writing.
But a publishing seminar would be incomplete without a discussion of the inevitable rejection.
“I often get asked about rejection,” Stufflebeam said. “How to handle rejection and how much to expect. I’ve had over 90 articles published since 2013 when I started submitting. That sounds like a lot, but I’ve also had over 2,000 rejections .
“I think ultimately you just develop thick skin,” she said. “It’s important to keep in mind that if an editor rejects your work, it doesn’t mean your work is terrible. Often it’s just that the work didn’t sit well with that editor. There can be a number of reasons. Maybe they just bought something that was very similar. I’ve had stories that have been rejected by 60 markets, and market #61 picks them up. I think it It’s important to distance yourself from the work. Instead of obsessing over the places you’ve submitted, move on to the next thing. Write something new to put your thoughts into the future.
Stufflebeam’s mainstay is horror stories, and glorious demons was inspired by the classic films of Hammer Films, the legendary English film studio made famous by actors like Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Barbara Shelley. Hammer produced a series of Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy films.
“During the pandemic, an editor asked me to write a short story inspired by Hammer Horror,” Stufflebeam said. “I had never watched a lot of Hammer movies, so it was exciting to dive into all those classic horror movies. After writing the short story, I wanted to explore these characters more, so I started writing the short story. , glorious demonswhich was released in September.
The story follows a vampire named Roxanne who resurrects her deceased best friends only to be confronted by a Dream-dwelling Guardian of the Underworld, who demands that she replace them in his afterlife with three equally nefarious creatures – or he will drag her down. there instead.
The Editor’s Weekly describe glorious demons like “History wears its horror influences on its sleeve with campy glee even as it dissects them.”
“I was trying to write this really serious story, and I was stuck at home (during the pandemic),” Stufflebeam said. “I decided that instead of writing this super serious stuff, I would write whatever I thought was funny. So I wrote this horror-based book that I loved and watched a lot. I just wanted to have fun with it. It’s very humorous, it’s very goofy and the characters are very lively.”
Stufflebeam, which pays the bills by writing romance games for the Chapters mobile app, has written a horror novel that its agent is about to start sending to publishers.
