Eight Years and Counting

I remember like it was yesterday—the first confident submission of this campaign to get my foot in the door of the short story market. I sent a Roman era ghost story to a magazine called Liminal. I was full of hope, but of course inexperienced—green, if you like—and had no real idea what to expect. I’d made a few experimental submissions in the previous months but wasn’t counting those. Well, Liminal didn’t take the story, nor did they ever take anything from me, and ceased publication a couple of years ago. But that ghost story placed four days ago with Black Beacon Books, in a freshly-polished form, so my original confidence was vindicated at last!

At the eight year mark I’d have to say I’ve raised my game. I’ve tuned what I’m doing to better match the market, certainly I’m focusing on those parts that are most welcoming: perhaps a third of my expected placements in the coming year will be period mystery, or speculative fiction in a certain group of markets where I’ve encountered my best success. That still leaves two thirds on the submit-and-see principal, so nothing has changed in that respect.

However, I am beginning to move into novels and single-author anthologies, and this is the main step-up, or direction change, in my modus operandi.

This is my eighth annual review of progress/state of play post, and 2023 has laid the foundations for ambitious steps to come.

Here's the raw data:

In the last eight years, I’ve made 3119 submissions (270 in the last year, a lot less than the previous year). I have 244 placements (12.78:1 submission/acceptance ratio, up from 14.53:1 last year, which was up from 15.11:1 the year before that, which bettered 16.008:1 in the previous year). It’s gratifying to see this consistent positive decrease over the last four years, as my rate of placement is improving across the board despite all influences of market, economics, style or whatever).

However, my total number of submissions in play has eroded considerably, as my attention has been focused less on short story writing and more on long-form work. Submission Grinder shows some 32 submissions in play at this time, of which a few early ones are likely dead or in limbo, and this figure is less than half my tally for this time last year. These figures also indicate 2843 rejections, giving an overall rejection/acceptance ratio since 2016 of 11.65:1—again, an improvement for the fourth year running (2022: 13.178:1; 2021: 13.52:1; 2020: 14.27:1). The statistician in me sees these numbers and despite any negative feedback on individual works from individual markets—I certainly get it—I know I must be doing something right.

In the 365 days of 2023, I made 275 submissions (well down on the 368 of last year), of which 38 gained acceptances (my second-best year ever after 2021 with 41). This is a submission/rejection ratio for the year of just 7.23:1, a dramatic increase over last year’s 11.5:1, which improved from 2021's 12.375:1, and, most importantly, also edges out 2020's 7.67:1. While it may not have felt like it on a day to day basis, I seem to be doing better than at any previous time.

Average time between acceptances in Year Eight was comfortably down from 2022’s 11.4 days to just 9.60 days—not quite as good as 2021’s 9.125 days: it seems hard times are still with the reading and publishing world. The long dead patches still occur, and with fewer submissions in play I’ve noticed that the previous pattern of long and short period rejections don’t cluster as they used to—I simply go more periods with neither acceptances nor rejections, just...nothing.

One or two semi-professional, placements have come along—with NewMyths, for instance, always a pleasure.

Rather shockingly, I find my new fiction productivity has been at its lowest ebb since the process began, just 16 new stories completed in 2023, half of which are Sherlock Holmes tales. They total 131, 793 words, down from last year’s 175, 871. This is balanced perhaps by my reworking of older pieces to find homes.

I have 300 stories registered at Submission Grinder, a modest increase over last year’s total, though excluding different versions of the same story which in a few cases are listed there for my own reference.

Once again, Sherlock Holmes is my hottest area of endeavour. I have an estimated eight stories to produce in 2024, all of which have target marketplaces and excellent chances of acceptance. I now have eleven placements with Belanger Books anthologies, and have found a home also with MX Books’ ongoing Anthology of New Sherlock Holmes Stories series. I have placed a third story with Strand Magazine, and an confident of others in future.

My novel Sherlock Holmes: A Tradition of Evil, was released by Belanger Books in August, 2023, and marks the beginning of a new chapter in this endeavour. It has been well received so far, with predominantly five star reactions at both Amazon and Goodreads, and I should be writing my second novel during 2024. My Sherlock Holmes short story output for 2023 was 78, 083 words, slightly up on last year, and excluding a single story as yet unfinished.

I also have three single-author anthologies in development: a collection of my vampire tales forthcoming from Hiraeth Books in the US, which is now at an advanced stage of readiness, plus Holmesian and Lovecraftian volumes also on the table for this year. Also, a chapbook is due out soon from Black Hare here in Australia, a psychological thriller titled If Thine Eye Offend Thee. This will be in format with my previous release with them, The Salamandrion.

My total accepted word count stands at 1, 248, 985 words—this including all reprints and solicitations, as well as podcasts—there have been a few (links on my author site).

The Inspector Trevelyan Mysteries has scored an extra placement, a tale appearing shortly in Black Cat Weekly. A George Trevelyan novel is now very much on the cards, probably for 2025, which on the back of an expanding small press track record may be a flag-carrier for the next level of this enterprise.

That's the view from this particular keyboard as Year Eight melds into Nine. Short fiction is beginning to give way to long form work, and my small press credits are expanding (both novels and collections based in large part on preexisting work, though always with some new material for freshness). I hope a year from now I have more big steps to report!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Royalty-free image from Unsplash.

A Busy Year, and More to Come

I have soooo neglected this blog! The truth of the matter is that the blog was created to support my writing career, serving potentially as an affidavit of my presence and reality as a writer for those in the publishing trade, and as my career has grown busier I’ve had less time to reflect those events on the blog. (Plus I’m never sure how many people are or aren’t reading here—am I keeping this record pretty much for myself? I would like to think a few readers do indeed drop by!)

2023 has been a busy year! While the regular review roundup is due on January 7^th, which will be the eighth anniversary of my launching my bid to be a professional writer, here is so much to reflect on.

This year saw my Sherlock Holmes novel A Traditional of Evil released, a genuine milestone. I’ve written a fair few novel-length projects in my time, but this is the first genuinely professional outing to see print, and there’ll be more to come, with a second novel to be written in 2024. Coming early in the year there’ll be a second chapbook from Black Hare Press, the psychological horror piece If Thine Eye Offend Thee, and I have so far lined up what should be three single-author anthologies for the coming year.

The last story is now on paper for a collection with Hiraeth Publishing in the US in the horror/action/supernatural field, and the material is being brought together for not one but two anthologies with Belanger Books—more on these when the time comes.

The launch of my author website some months ago was another big stride, and there are updates on the way, a major one in the next round providing a wealth of reading.

So despite how quiet I’ve been, things are indeed busy, and big things are coming!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Royalty-free header image from Pixabay

Recently Read: The Alternate Martians by A. Bertram Chandler

Here is a novel I first read as a child of ten years or so, and indeed it was the same copy. We have a 1965 Ace first edition, in poor condition (this will probably be the last time it's ever subjected to a reading, and there are better copies out there to be had). I last read it probably some decades ago, and had only a few memories to draw on, but this was the sequel to Chandler's The Coils of Time, which I reviewed in February, 2017, so it was a logical choice.

Chandler (1912-1984) was one of our favourite science fiction writers in the far-off days of childhood. Not that he was writing for children at all, some of his material was probably a bit strong for kids in retrospect, but standards were far less, well, prissy, in those days, and we got to read the books on the shelf.

Chandler was fascinated by what today we call the Multiverse concept, and explored it several times. I first heard of the notion in Science Fiction Monthly in 1974, when it was described by the old term “parallel worlds,” or “moving sideways in time,” and it would seem the latter was the concept that struck Chandler. The precept established in the previous novel was that a machine designed for time travel might, due to its own imperfectly understood nature, send a traveller sideways as surely as backward, thus accessing another stream of reality. In that event it was to a Venus where planetary catastrophe had not unfolded as it did for our Venus, giving rise to a habitable world on which a neo-Burroughsian adventure could unfold. The degree to which Chandler was devoted to the vintage science fiction of Wells and Burroughs can be gauged by the sequel, which constitutes a full-blown homage, with some original twists for good measure.

The original characters make an expedition from Science City on Venus, to Mars, taking the “Time Twister” machinery with them, with the object of trying to discover if writers like Wells and Burroughs—Leigh Bracket is also mentioned by name—were not simply creating their fantastical visions of these places, but remembering them, a kind of distorted telepathic vision transmitted across the membranes separating parallel universes (“coils of time” as Chandler called them). The intention was to send a small party through the device into this other reality to explore. However, interference from the ship's inertial drive, operated simultaneously with the time machine, sent not just the explorers through, but the entire ship...

The world in which they appear is a hostile one. Lowell's canals exist, pumped water from the high latitudes feeds cities closer to the equator, but the inhabitants of this planet are drawn from two sources—War of the Worlds (Wells's Martians, with their tripods, handling machines, heat rays and gas weapons) and the other Martians of John Carter fame, the six-limbed green ones, like Tars Tarkas. Then there are the humans, kept as slaves (and food) by the “Masters,” the tentacle-bearing, owl-eyed things that drive the tripods. These humans are the resilient Cockneys of London, scooped up by the Martians in their rampage and transported back to Mars because they were useful.

This delightful mishmash avoids being a pastiche because it paces a new spin on every aspect. Bill Carter and Delia Doris are crude but true-hearted Cockney tearaways living in rags in the Martian deserts, and Well's bacterial apocalypse for the invaders is seen to be an embellishment upon the time-spanning memory, the wishful thinking of the author—the alternative would of course have been a pessimism that made the original tale not worth telling.

The theme is revolution, the arrival of visitors from a parallel universe the catalyst for change that will rage across the planet as the oppressed humans and green Martians rise up and sweep away the stagnant, indolent overlords. Regular heroic fare, then, filled with swords and violent, brutal action—stories as they were told long ago.

Chandler's professional background as a merchant sea captain comes through very strongly. His space vessel is run on merchant marine lines, with bridge, engine room, staffing requirements—and every malady of the sea trades made manifest in space: owners versus master, liability issues, crew versus automation, civil regulations, autocratic minor functionaries throwing their weight around, a Scottish engineer who thinks he knows better than the Captain... It's rather heartwarming to see the real maritime experience of the mid-20^th century perpetuated into the future—somewhat naive perhaps but it certainly spoke volumes about human optimism.

How Chandler treats women is another matter, and here he is a product of his time. There are only two main female characters, both stunningly beautiful (of course) and treated on a umber of occasions in an inherently dismissive way by narrative or dialogue. This novel was published in 1965, when women were still bound by pedantic male social custom, and to act out of the ordinary in any significant way was somewhere between risque (think Bond women, maybe?)  and unacceptable/unbelievable, so for these women to be pilots, explorers, fighters, and self-assertive, was actually quite forward-moving. For this reason, I'm prepared to forgive the broader cultural narrative of the age showing through.

The Alternate Martians was published in an Ace Doubled (M-129) back to back with Chandler's Empress of Outer Space, another great read from a great age of space opera. Can it still be found? I'm aware of at least one reissue in a new edition, and there are copies of the original to be had fairly cheaply on eBay. As with The Coils of Time, it is a work to be read in light of the age when it was written, and enjoyed as enthusiastic storytelling, with some clever twists.

Mike Adamson

A New Website, and Other Developments

This blog has been rather neglected for one reason and another, with nowhere near as many posts as it had the its early days. It's more than time for an update, and the big news must be either of two headlines. Let's start with my brand new dedicated author website!

Check out The Worlds of Mike Adamson for the most comprehensive overview of my writing you'll find anywhere. Here are pages dedicated to my work by genre, with listings of completed works and their publication histories, plus new essays. Also links to my my nonfiction work, journalistic pieces, book reviews (the ones here on the blog), interviews and such—there are more of them out there than I thought, and quite impressive when brought together. Purchase links are provided for all published works throughout, along with the covers of publications containing those stories—there are lots!

The site was built by my sister Jen Downes, who writes html like plain English. She is also an artist—the site is richly illustrated with science fiction, fantasy and horror artwork, generated in Photoshop and 3D/CGI software. Jen is also a dab-hand at prompting an AI to generate something usable too. This latter technique was used to generate substitute images within the site format to stand in for those online publications for which there are essentially no cover illustrations to present as links to the material.

There are dozens of free reads out there—places where my stories appear in online archives and may be read without a paywall. These are gathered together in a coordinated link-list, with new artwork and teasers, for ease of access.

The site has already been updated once, with extra material on the miscellany page—interviews, commercial author pages and such.

I could not be happier with the site, nor more grateful to Jen for bringing it together. There'll be rolling updates, so check back from time to time for what's new!

In other news—my second single-author volume with Belanger Books is officially go! The title has not yet been finalised, and the publishers have asked me to play things close to the chest for the moment, but there'll definitely be an exciting new Sherlock Holmes volume from me in 2024!

Next post coming shortly—a new review of an old book!

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Recently Read: The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Continuing with my interest in soaking up the classics, over the last few days I've had the pleasure of finally reading H. G. Wells's original 1895-97 epic, The War of the Worlds. I read a 1978 paperback copy by Golden Books of the US, still in surprisingly good condition, though the cover has been laminated with clear vinyl for durability.

Everyone knows the story, at least the high points, and it has been adapted for all conceivable media countless times—but the original remains a wonderful read and a highly worthwhile work in its own right.

It's not a long work, and the style is easily followed, if one has developed an ear for the over-formal, often over-loquacious, 19^th century expression. Just as with the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one must allow, ever so slightly, for changing modes of expression over time, as indeed for the idiosyncrasies of individual style. Besides the formalities, there are figures of speech we just don't use any more, nor have we in living memory, but I find myself mentally editing, translating these expressions into the common word usage of today, so there is no jar or difficulty. On the same point, it's worth noting that Robert Louis Stevenson's style could be a lot more jarring to the modern ear than either Doyle's or Wells's, at least in Jekyll and Hyde, though not, oddly, in Treasure Island.

The War of the Worlds is the story of an English summer late in Victorian times, when a profound change came over the world. London and its immediate counties was the venue for the arrival of alien invaders, a desperately overused theme in science fiction in general, but Wells's novel was the first time in literary history that it appeared, and one can imagine the effect it must have had upon its first readers. For contemporary society to be faced with an implacable foe whose technology was a mystery and who regarded human beings as we have been guilty of regarding all other lifeforms on our own planet, can easily be seen as a commentary on the ills of the world, the way that science fiction has often been the “safe” vehicle for social critique and discussion. There is considerable comment on this aspect out there in the literature, and indeed Wells was inspired to write his novel by aspects of British colonialism.

The narrative is a first person account through the eyes of an unnamed protagonist (which seems a little odd to us today), as well as a second-hand account from the character's brother of other events elsewhere. It would seem the Martians landed only in England (a tradition Dr Who has upheld staunchly, as surely as aliens only ever arrive in America in American works). The story is told nigh blow-by-blow and from the personal viewpoint, as a man alone struggles through catastrophe, fire and battle, and the horrors of the refugee columns fleeing the invaders. Wells was indeed quite graphic in his descriptions, more so than I had expected, though tasteful enough to sensibilities attuned to modern Hollywood's seemingly ubiquitous brutality and splatter.

The action takes place mostly between Surrey, to the west of London, and in the city itself, and I found myself most engaged when the protagonist walks through parts of London I know well—on streets I have actually visited myself. He walked up Baker Street to Regent's Park at a time we know Sherlock Holmes to have lived there, so two aspects of the fictional reality of the times intersect in a strange and very neat way.

The 19^th century notions of high technology are of course quaint to us, but it is fascinating to see what Wells was forecasting with his Martians. Walking machines—we've done them, if not tripodially; the “heat ray” preguesses the laser beam by sixty years; the “black smoke” is a terrible foreshadowing of chemical weapons as used only twenty years later; and the “handling machine” with which the Martians construct new systems after landing can be easily visualised by us as it would seem to be a large robot, equipped with handling arms, styled more or less on a scorpion.

Wells has a wonderful turn of phrase. His descriptions of the English countryside, his character sketches, and his oratory describing scenes of disaster and conflict resonate off the page over 126 years later, and make his era come very much alive. Likewise, he was clearly an astute student of human nature, for in this work he finds the best and worst among his fellow beings.

The novel was perhaps controversial in its time for its depiction of religion as both the cornerstone and crutch of society, yet also a thing of words in the mouths of those of insufficient moral strength to face the situation. The character known only as “the curate” is the epitome of this—a man of God who is a profound coward, who loses his mind so thoroughly that he must finally be “silenced” by our protagonist as they hide from the Martians. This part was transposed (sanitised) in the 1953 Americanised movie into the noble if misguided priest who walked out before the war machines with a cross and a Bible to exorcise them—and was vaporised.

Perhaps the device of Earthly bacteria being the downfall of the Martian organisms is too simplistic for us—surely germ theory would long predate the ability to travel between worlds—but Wells explains it in terms of the course of an alien evolution, that bacteria and viral bodies did not exist on Mars, thus were not foreseen before the invaders exposed themselves to our environment. It seems a stretch to us, but flew well enough in its day.

The entire novel can be plotted on maps. It takes place in the world of the time, and those places still exist. One could perform a tour throughout the locations, from the village of Woking where the first Martian projectile landed, through to Primrose Hill in London, where the last war machines came to a halt as their pilots died. It would be quite an adventure to recreate the events of that long-ago summer.

If you're a fan of Sherlock Holmes or other Victorian to Edwardian classics, I highly recommend Wells's The War of the Worlds. It's not much like the dark derivative filmed by the BBC a few years ago, and no US production has anything in common beyond a name and a concept. (The US has always updated and set the story locally, from Orson Welles's famous (infamous?) Mercury Theatre radio production of 1938, to Spielberg's highly derivative movie of 2005, and others.) To read the original is to put yourself into a world long gone, yet tackle notions which were at that time wholly fresh and profoundly disturbing.

I could not locate a file of the cover of the edition I read, so instead present above the famous cover of the very first issue of Amazing Stories, from 1926, in which the novel was reprinted.

Mike Adamson

New Releases

A couple of new titles have appeared—you can find my work in an anthology from the US and magazines from the UK and US.

First, the good folks at Third Flatiron took a short prose-poem style piece from me for their anthology Rhapsody of the Spheres. Catch “Sunrise on Eris” for a look back upon the solar system from its outermost reaches.

Buy links:

Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CFCZHBRS

Ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCK9WYTT

And just out today from Cathaven Press, Occult Detective Magazine #10 features my archaeo-ghost-mystery “Secret of the Lark.” This is a fairly unique story for me so far, combining my qualifications in archaeology and a lifetime interest in art with a supernatural theme and an exercise in detection.

Buy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CGL3S5TH

Also out recently from Hiraeth Books in the US, the July 2023 Shelter of Daylight features a reprint of my fantasy short “Fall of the Dark God,” which first appeared in Lovecraftiana back in 2017. This was the first fantasy story I ever wrote, in the 1990s, and polished up for publication. It's the first of my “Avestium” arc, of which there are now eight tales.

Buy here: https://www.hiraethsffh.com/product-page/shelter-of-daylight-july-2023

You can also find the title through all your favourite online booksellers.

And lastly, Bellangers have released an ebook edition of A Tradition of Evil, which joins the hardback and paperback editions at Amazon. There's also a whisper of a forthcoming audio book—stay tuned for details!

Cheers from Aus,

Mike Adamson

A Tradition of Evil

I can hardly believe I didn't post in July, and that August is nearly out!

The big news is of course that my Sherlock Holmes novel A Tradition of Evil went on sale early this month (official release date was August 1^st) though even as we enter the last week of the month Amazon is still listing it as “temporarily out of stock.” Many folks have received their Kickstarter copies, and some have been able to order direct—Amazon UK, for instance, I believe has stock and ships promptly.

Here's the buy link for Amazon US:

https://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Tradition-Mike-Adamson/dp/B0CD91X511

The book also has a Goodreads page, which you can find here:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/195503549-sherlock-holmes

Some weeks on there are no ratings or reviews, which is a bit disappointing as it seemed there was considerable interest at first, but it's not yet translated into feedback. Amazon looks for fifty reviews (good or bad makes no difference) before they begin to promote the product themselves, and that of course is the gateway to desirable extra sales.

It feels amazing to have a book out there, and to see copies in both hardback and paperback is quite the validation of one's efforts over so long. I'm looking forward very much to coming to grips with my second Sherlock Holmes adventure, once a couple of other projects are done and dusted.

In other news, NewMyths have picked op my “Middle Stars” story “Gaming Aquarius,” a sequel to “Wharf Rat” which they publish a couple of years ago. This is my fortieth placed story in the cycle, and I'm closing in on sixty on paper. Unfortunately, it will be 2025 before they can get the story out to readers, so keep an eye on their website about the end of next year.

Things have otherwise been quite. I'm bringing together an anthology of my vampire stories (they're receiving a pro edit at this time) and hopefully Hiraeth will be releasing this one in the not too distant future. Also, I'm working on my novel Venatrix again, with an eye to completing it before launching back into a full scale Holmesian outing.

Cheers, Mike Adamson