My First Short Story Is Being Published By Litro Magazine

Yay!

I was delighted to have my short story Throwaway Things accepted for publication by Litro magazine. You can read it here.

It was actually the first proper short story I completed, in August 2015, after having gotten sick of editing two novels I had written. I always saw myself as a novelist (I still struggle to stick to word counts with short stories!) But following the advice of the great Ray Bradbury, I decided to start writing short stories before attempting any more fiddling around with the novels.

I needed to mature in my storytelling, to get tighter with my editing, and the short story is the ideal medium for it, without getting yourself too twisted up in the business of a novel.

I first submitted Throwaway Things, naively, to Granta in January 2016 and it didn’t take long to receive the rejection I pretty much expected.

I always had Litro on my radar –  as far as I’m concerned they are one of the players you want to be published by on the lit mag scene. They have a very good reputation and have been around for a while. So my second submission was to Litro – I sent my short story to them at the end of February 2016 and received an email almost exactly three months later saying they wanted to publish it.

So my first officially published debut short story, Throwaway Things was published on 9th June 2016 and promoted by Litro’s #lunchbreakfic Twitter hashtag. I hope you do read it on your lunch break and enjoy mulling over some of the themes for the rest of the afternoon (or working – up to you, really).

Thanks Litro! And thanks to anyone who reads my writing.