I’m happy to announce my first fiction publication.  Early in the year, I set a personal goal of getting something published by the end of this year. To my surprise, I’ve actually achieved that goal. Today.

It’s an ominous, imagistic piece of flash fiction (under 1000 words) titled “The Dead Outnumber the Living.”

It’s being published today in the monthly online magazine, “Dali’s Lovechild,” a very cool literary journal with an oddball, offbeat aesthetic that I enjoy very much.

So click here to read my first published piece of fiction, “The Dead Outnumber the Living,” in Issue 15 of Dali’s Lovechild.

Please leave a comment here or on the Dali’s Lovechild site if you like the story, or even if you don’t! And check out the rest of the issue.

To quote the Dali’s Lovechild editors:  “As Salvador Dali understood, all art is multi-faceted. Even his most surrealistic pieces contained a piece of truth, a piece of humanity. He knew that you could not have the absurd without the truth embedded somewhere inside.”

Related flashback: I remember, when I lived back east, looking at Dali’s famous “soft watches” masterwork, “The Persistence of Memory,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and being astonished at how small it was. The painting suggests great scope and power. But in real life, it’s tiny!

My flash fiction piece arose out of an exercise I did back in February during classes at the Writers Studio Tucson with Janelle Drumwright.  My thanks to Janelle for encouraging me with the piece and helping me develop it.  (Please hurry over and read her most excellent essay, “You, Dear Writer, are not the Narrator,” which was a winning entry in the 2015 Carve Magazine blog contest. It explains much of the creative ethos behind the Writers Studio, a system of study which has had a hugely beneficial effect on my writing.)

I’ll keep pushing. I have a number of other stories out for consideration, and a few others I’m polishing now. I hope … hope …. to have more acceptances to report in the months ahead.

I’ll keep you posted. And if you’ve had a recent fiction sale that you’re excited about, go ahead and let us know in the comments below.