My first solo author event has been in the works almost since my arrival back home from Hollywood in April. I did two signings there, one en masse with the other writers and illustrators for special copies, with a stack of books wobbling precariously over my head, and the other snugly sandwiched between , the winner of the Golden Pen, and Bafu, my illustrator and the winner of the Golden Brush, all three of us giddy with the surreal award ceremony we had just finished.

Most events in my career will likely not occur in formal black tie evening dress with my anthology friends on either side of me.

It is the one downside to an international contest. While Michael T. Kuester and post pictures of their duo signing online, I must sigh in the face of the Atlantic Ocean that lies between my incomparable Slovak illustrator and myself.

We are all of us only a few clicks away on the internet, but for in-person events, I am on my own.

Or almost so.

I did have the beautiful art of my friendly dragon to keep me company, and the well wishes of my Volume 42 friends to cheer me on.

And before I knew it, readers.

There is always the whispering fear at author events that no one will show up.

A fear this time that proved entirely unfounded.

Barnes & Noble on a Saturday is as packed with people, vibrant, varied, and bookish, as one could possibly hope. I had only to sit quietly and wait for them to spill through the doors and be drawn to the warm, red dragon poster perched on the corner of the table like moths enchanted by light.

After that it was easy.

Writing may be much easier than talking for some of us in this trade, but the lovely people coming to meet me made talking about Writers of the Future Volume 42 perfectly easy.

We all love books. And I had a shiny new one, stuffed to the covers with dragons, time travel, mysteries, local lore, corporate corruption, and cheese.

Readers, know this.

You are a writer’s real heroes. Sharing the enchantment of story with you and watching the winds of wonder catch your breath and bring new light to your eyes, putting a beautiful book in your hands and watching you hold it close, all of us dragons hoarding treasure-words, that is magic. And you are all of you real and different and full of stories of your own.

Here I was hoping to get more than one book, ambitiously even more than five into the hands of new readers, and not sit patiently waiting for readers who never came. My modest hopes were brilliantly dashed by the far better reality. In one afternoon, I met

• Two fellow Writers of the Future contest entrants, one a recipient of an Honorable Mention and the other a semi-finalist

• An MFA student and writer of romance and cozy mysteries

• A school librarian

• A musician

• A friend of a friend

• Someone sent to get a book from me after the recipient saw a video interview and decided “she seems nice”

• An aspiring writer who needed the reminder it is never too late to tell the story in your heart

• Little readers too young for a thick science fiction and fantasy book, but who were interested in bookmarks, which I was more than happy to share

So to the readers of Springfield, a heartfelt thank you for making my first local signing such a success. I may have been on my own this time, but you kept me from feeling lonely. Thank you for letting me share my story with you and for giving me a glimpse of yours.

I hope you enjoy the dragons.

Looking for flash fiction? This month’s flash is postponed due to author events. Last month’s story is still available in

In that time, I have experienced at least a few of the natural stages.

Denial.

Disbelief.

Dreamlike wandering.

The struggles of self-promotion.

Secretly scrolling through early reviews.

Struggling to find a new rhythm and new words.

Writing another story.

While L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42 continues to do well, creeping closer and closer to 100 Amazon reviews, the quest for further publication continues.

Three stories are currently out for submission, two of them sent out in a late-night writing frenzy I have not enjoyed since much earlier in my writing adventures. Still, no cause for panic. Seven minutes before midnight is still in time.

As I write this, the stories have been sent out long enough ago I am fighting the continual urge to keep refreshing my inbox for publisher responses…or persuading myself to forget I am waiting for an answer altogether.

Amusingly enough, I did briefly forget one of these story submissions. Not the story itself, of course. That I have not stopped thinking about, and continue to experiment with expanding it into a novel.

It is perhaps the best attitude I’ve had with any short story submission. Being published would be a delight. But I have grown so attached to the concept and character, even if I receive a rejection, I count the new creative world entirely as a win.

It’s a good thing, too, since this month also brought a rejection for a story I have been waiting to hear about since the end of August last year. After being longlisted for one of my dream publications, I finally received the regretful “no” from the publisher due to thematic fit and limits of space.

I was, naturally, devastated.

But that is the life of a writer. You write from the heart, you fail, and you try again. And if a story is meant to be heard, sooner or later, I’m inclined to believe it will be.

Even if cozy culinary planetary sci-fi flash fiction is a genre crossover that leaves most journals scratching their heads, it’s a good story, and I believe there’s a home for it out there.

In the meantime, I am writing.

Exploring historically-inspired fantasy, the magic of music, and gothic horror. Though not, I should add, in the same project or at the same time.

But you do not need to bite your nails with me as I wait for acceptances from publishers to read another of my stories.

It’s time for me to keep my promise of sharing micro and flash fiction, and letting Letters from Lost Things live up to its name.

Lost & Found: The Postcard

It is a crime to read someone else’s mail.

Postcards, however, are not the same as sealed envelopes. There is no pivotal embarkation onto a life of crime marked by the ripping of glued paper. It is nearly impossible not to read it, when it flaps through the air on an overcast day, the kind of foggy morning where everything echoes from nowhere and even familiar places feel strange. When a postcard, dirty and bedraggled from its path of entry through the park, flutters and flits like a broken, lost kite, and comes to land almost on top of your shoe.

If curiosity were a crime, the entire world would be a jail. Postcards, certainly, do not count.

And so you read the single line scrawled in light, delicate blue ink.

You’re not lost now.

They tell me I am a professional author now. Walking through the doors of the bookstore, I feel pretty much the same.

The bookstore, too, has changed in little ways. I only come at different seasons, in defense of my wallet against glossy hardcover anniversary editions with gilded pages, and lest by lingering for as long as I would want, I annoy the staff and make myself a pest.

The brass handles on the outside have been worn out and replaced with black ones, another unutterable tragedy in the world of modern architectural design, but the interior ones are the same. It smells less of coffee in warm springtime, the rush of scented air no longer embracing me the moment I open the door as it does on cold winter days.

But inside, it is still a palace of books.

Books of every shape, size, and topic imaginable. The faint scent of fresh pages, the heavy silence of unread ink.

Here be books that know what they are and their power of bewitching an unwary reader away on adventures to strange and distant worlds from which one returns breathless, a little lost, and never quite the same.

I am here on business, not to browse.

I do a bit of browsing anyway.

I am of course hoping, as I wander past the display dedicated to Andy Weir, lose my way in Sports/Religion/Research and somehow wind up at Magazines, to catch a glimpse of L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42. The very first book in which one of my stories appears.

I can’t find it.

It is surprisingly busy in the bookstore for a random Thursday afternoon, which I find a little too crowded for my personal taste, but quite cheering as a new author, until I am reminded it is not random, but the Thursday before Mother’s Day, and shoppers are likely not thinking about the latest science fiction and fantasy.

In which case belatedly I say buy her Volume 42. It’s what she wants. Undoubtedly.

Somewhere between the Bibles and the Legos, I am refreshed on my quest by the faint strains of a Hozier song. They were playing Hozier the last time I was in. Do they always play Hozier? Does some invisible bookstore DJ spy on book-goers through the security cameras and decide by my walk and wardrobe that Hozier is what I want to hear? Is it the same Hozier song, the same moment, a time-stop in a bookstore, taking me back to the last time I was lost among Legos, so time spent with books does not count in the outside world?

That would be useful.

The Writers of the Future anthology series, in case you also are scavenging all sections of the bookstore looking for it, is shelved under “Science Fiction,” which seems somewhat unfair to the dragons, but no worse a solution than any of the rest of us could make in such a position. I found them on the top of the first shelf (or last, if you are returning from wandering among Sports, Reference, Romance, and Legos), which in some ways is wonderful and in others is not.

Wonderful, because the beam of poetic sunlight (or at any rate, fluorescent) can fall across the glossy covers and successfully bewitch readers into gazing, dazzled, at an anthology which a certain twelve of us are very hopeful they will buy.

Unfortunate, because the shelves, being excellent and loomingly tall, were not constructed with Persons of Impish Stature in mind.

The display is difficult for some of us in the reading population to see.

Still, I know the covers by heart well enough to recognize volumes 35, 39 (nicely turned to face the aisle and display the dragon to full advantage) and 41…

But where is 42?

The answer to life, the universe and everything—or at least some very good stories—is missing?

It is in stock. I checked the website before I came.

Unless—someone bought it?

Rather than climbing the shelves for a closer look and risking a lifelong bookstore ban, and yearning for a rolling ladder a little more than usual, I go in search of a clerk.

The one I met was very helpful, despite my being soft-spoken in the presence of so many books, and must be seasoned at encouraging local authors for how skillful she was at doing so.

But she hadn’t seen Volume 42 either, and so I was forced to retreat.

In the end, perhaps not the first bookstore visit as a professional author that was hoped for.

But they’re releasing a new omnibus edition of the Elric of Melnibone books, so there’s still hope in the world yet.

But they’re not the only ones.

You’ll meet sci-fi noir detectives, a shy couple slowly falling in love in virtual reality, a man fighting for a second chance at life (and a body), South African girls face to face with their own ideals of beauty, time travel rescue missions, music, mourning, a lonely triceratops, and so much more.

After roughly ten years of writing, writing, and writing, it is my immense pleasure to be published in L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 42.

While this gorgeous book, complete with full color illustrations, comes out in paperback, ebook, and audio versions everywhere books are sold one day from now, you don’t have to wait. Preorders are already live, and come with digital wallpaper of the cover art, so Ciruelo’s golden-eyed dragon can stare into your soul every time you pick up your phone.

Mike Strickland, the author of the charming, sweet little sci-fi romance “As Long as You Both Shall Live,” is also offering a special bonus: a free ebook copy of his story (illustration included) to the first 100 downloaders if you contact him and show proof of preordering Volume 42. Just in case it feels impossible to wait for fresh, new SF/F stories one more day.

You can reach him at https://strick.land/contact, and find his Substack at “Dispatches from Stricklandia.”

Book preorders can be found through your preferred retailer or through GalaxyPress here.

And with that, I’m back to counting down the seconds to becoming an officially published writer, and hoping my little modern fairytale finds its place in readers’ hearts.

See you tomorrow.