Short Stories No Longer Available.

It always saddens me when something I had published is no longer available to be purchased. And since most of my work has been published by tiny publishing houses, many of which closed their doors after just a few years of operation, the likelihood of not being able to find my work is greater than hoped. This is especially true of work that was only published in print form but it is by far not exclusively the case.

I've been fortunate enough to have published and, in some cases, republished well over three dozen short stories and two novels. The story count might be even higher than that now but I'm not obsessive about counting. Thankfully, the majority of my work can still be found.

Unfortunately, sometimes a publisher doesn't simply cease publishing. Sometimes they vanish like the proverbial fart upon yon breeze. Such was the case with the publisher of SciFan Magazine, the first publication to print a story of mine. I submitted a second story to the publisher only to soon realize he was more interested in promoting his own science fiction novel than in continuing to publish a high-quality magazine.  And it was high-quality. You can see by clicking here that SciFan is no more.

The story SciFan published, "No More Goodbyes," was not one I consider among my best, although I'm still rather fond of it. One story I do consider one of my best appeared in the anthology, "The Good Fight" concerning a superhero called Vanishing Act who discovers that the battle against evil isn't necessarily one he should be waging. That story is now out of print and I feel it deserves further consideration.

Perhaps the most painful loss is my beloved The Darkness Internal. Aussie publisher and friend Mark Turner ran out of funds after a rather impressive dual run of his main Voluted Tales Magazine and my imprint, named above. I got to publish six issues before the inevitable ax descended and, for several years afterwards and to the surprise of Mark, the issues remained online. I foolishly allowed myself to believe they always would be but the links no longer work. Now the only record of The Darkness Internal's existence can be found on blogs such as this one and this one.

It's sad to see a publication that included one's work gone into the ether; it happens to even the most famous authors. But when it's something I worked on from conception to inception, I can't deny that it hurts. I wish I'd thought of compiling the better stories into a self-published "Best of" but alas, I did not.

For those who may not be aware, most short stories, still available or not, become available to the author again within a year of publication. So, those stories that are no longer available could have been shopped around to others while they were still actively able to be purchased. A few were, actually.

As an author, I feel duty-bound to send work I have confidence back out for further consideration. And at some point, they will be collected in a short collection that will also one day go out of print.