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We interrupt our regularly scheduled program of weekly blog posts about the writing craft for some shameless, celebratory self-promotion.  I normally eschew such behavior, but since I shared my goal of 100 rejections with you, I thought it only fair to share the welcome failure of that goal.  You see, I'm unlikely to reach 100 rejections because I've now had not one, but TWO acceptances within the past month.  Kaleidotrope has purchased my short story "Bread of Life" for online publication in 2014 and The Saturday Evening Post has purchased "The Battle of the Pewhasset Pie Palace" for publication in their online issue for Jan/Feb of 2013.  This feels really good.

About a year or so ago, I made the decision to build my arsenal of short stories as a means of building my writing platform.  You see, as you may know from other posts, the whole marketing thing is not one of my strong suits.  I have a website.  I have two blogs.  I have an author's page on Facebook.  I even finally signed up for Twitter.  But I am not a master at using those tools for self-promotion.  However, I noticed that many writers of books I was reading and admiring, such as Karen Russell, had gotten their feet in the door through the short story market.  And the digital age has been a boon to that market. So I decided maybe that was one way I could seek to build my platform, visibility and credentials - writing short stories and submitting them consistently.  This strategy has been slowly but surely yielding results, sometimes in the form of placing at a high level in a contest, sometimes in the form of almost-made-it and "please try again with another."  And now, at last, in the form of actual sales.

So, besides my own personal celebratory yee-haw, I guess this blogpost is also an example of an alternative method of marketing and building your platform for writers, like me, who struggle with the promotional side of things.  Best of luck, and keep on trucking!