So I’ve already gleefully announced this via Facebook and Twitter, but I made my first professional sale last Thursday night!

Penumbra Magazine bought my flash story, “The Business is Dying” for their Zombie Apocalypse issue (coming out next month), and I couldn’t be more thrilled. From the emails with Celina the head editor and the speediness with which they sent my contract (I hear they pay promptly as well), I can tell that this is a great publishing family to be a part of. I’d love to work with them again – so it looks like I need to get cracking on some more short stories.

“The Business is Dying” is a zombie story, of all things. While I totally love my story and had one of those “I think i can sell this” feelings about it immediately after writing it, it’s funny that my first sale ever, let alone at professional rates, was a cliche that has been saturating the market for years now, including Penumbra. Apparently there were over 600 submissions for this particular issue. THAT was a fun tidbit from the acceptance email that made my inner kitty purr.

One last note on my sale is that, after a few beta readers took a look at this story, I rewrote the beginning and made a few changes in the middle and end to better reflect the changes at the beginning, but I still prefer the original beginning, info dump and all. I’m not going to question my decision to change the stuff that I found so amusing, though, because clearly making those changes didn’t hurt me at all – that what Celina read and that’s what she bought. There’s no guarantee that she or anyone else would have found my intro as humorous as I did, and I definitely think the opening as it will be published develops the setting and characters more. So there’s that.

Selling this story at the beginning of the year like this is clearly a sign that I need to make 2013 a stellar year. I plan to keep up the momentum by writing at least 6 new short stories, continuing to submit my short stories as usual, finishing my middle grade fantasy novel and taking it through at least one round of edits, and – oh yes – giving birth.