There's nothing more satisfying to a writer than to break into a new market - especially a market that at one time seemed an impenetrable bastion.

Well, after a third attempt I've had a short story (Blood and Sweat) accepted for publication by You magazine of South Africa.

It wasn't plain sailing though. First, I contacted a South African colleague to find out where I could buy You magazine in Abu Dhabi so I could get an idea of the tone of the fiction pages. As luck would have it, he had a copy of the magazine himself, which he gave me. Then, from my archives, I pulled out two Detective Inspector Williamson stories with a Zimbabwean element to them. Next, I honed the stories to the preferred length of 1500 wordsAfter that, I emailed the stories to You's fiction editor, stating in the subject line that the stories had a southern African feel to them.

Finally, a few weeks later, the reply arrived, and Bob's your uncle - one of the two stories made the grade.

This goes to show how a little market research and forethought can work to a writer's advantage. 

In the first non-Amazon review of Dead Bait 2, although the anthology as a whole doesn't get a rave review, my story The Mer-Monkey came in for high praise.

Here's what the writer of 'deadaeris' had to say:

"I was apprehensive at first about the first story, The Mer-Monkey, by Paul A. Freeman.  Truth be told, I thought it was going to be lame (Sorry Mr. Freeman).  I couldn’t have been more wrong if I had tried!  A museum curator writes to an anthropologist offering him a chance to see a defunct museum artifact – the mummified body of a mer-monkey.  The anthropologist meets with the curator, and after some discussion procures the means to go and catch his own specimen in the wild.  Unfortunately for him, the trip does not go as planned, and the mer-monkeys are far from docile.  The surprise ending was fabulous – with a twist of dark humor."

I'm still preening myself!

Not much has happened on the writing front this week. My contributor's copy of Dead Bait 2 arrived, and I'm still chuffed at being in the company of the likes of Guy N. Smith, Ramsey Campbell and Steve Alten. I also wrote a couple of articles for my company's in-house magazine. Lastly, I've started work in earnest on another Canterbury Tale.

The Summoner's Second Tale will likely as not lose the jocular feeling of most of my other tales, though it'll have its moments. As always, once the opening few lines are done (and I wrote them last Thursday), the rest of the tale gradually works itself out. Unfortunately I only have two weeks before the submission date for the anthology I want to place this tale in, so I'll have to get cracking.

These days I don't write that many articles, but I made an exception for the 16th annual Abu Dhabi Terry Fox Run.

Terry Fox was so 'human', so inspirational, yet his story was so tragic that this article proved an unusual challenge to write. I settled for an upbeat article about the day's event and the charities the money raised was destined to help, then put Terry's biographical information in a sidebar.

Below are links to a pdf of the article (both in English and in Arabic) as it appears in 'Al-Waha' magazine. The article is on page 17 of the pdf, pages 30 and 31 of the actual magazine.

The article turned out very colourful. I think Terry would have approved.

http://www.adco.ae/media/alwaha/2011/3_4_English.pdf

http://www.adco.ae/media/alwaha/2011/3_4_Arabic.pdf

Believe it or not, the Library of Horror Press is compiling a bacon-themed anthology, titled Baconology. One of my stories is set to appear in the anthology - quite ironic really, considering bacon is unavailable in this part of the world.

The anthology has been delayed for two years, through two changes of editor, but now, with Bill Tucker in the saddle, we can expect some rapid progress.