You know how it is. You brace yourself when you see an email from a literary magazine. Oh, okay it’s back, you think to yourself. Oh well, I’ll see where else I can send it. You open the email and it’s an acceptance. If you are like me and not super confident of your abilities, it probably takes you a while to realise what the email is actually saying. That they want to publish your story! 

It is a wonderful moment and for me a rather long winding journey to this first acceptance. I first wrote some short stories in the 1980s. In the 1990s I wrote poetry (and had quite a few acceptanced) and then began writing historical fiction which pretty much consumed me. (And still does). Short story writing was not something I did anymore. But three years ago a window opened and ideas flew back in.

It has taken me a while to build up a reasonable amount of short stories that I felt worthy of sending out into the world. Spreadsheet in hand I have been submitting in earnest for a while now and lately receiving some very encouraging “please submit again”s. And then in May my first acceptance from Typishly. I have also received a second acceptance of another short story but there is nothing like your first. And here it is.