This past weekend, I received my first acceptance letter! *throws all the confetti*

Camden Park Press is releasing an anthology called “Quoth the Raven.” It will feature stories and poems that put a modern twist on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. I adore Poe’s work (more on that further below), and decided to write a story and try my luck. I’m happy and proud to say that my story was chosen for the anthology! My story, “Hearts are Just ‘Likes’,” moves “The Tell-Tale Heart” to social media. It was fun to write, and I can’t wait for all of you to read it as part of this awesome collection.

While I’ve self-published my last two books, I’ve been submitting short stories to contests and calls for submission from various journals, magazines, and anthologies. I started a rejection collection to collect my rejection letters. When I created it, I held out hope that one day, I’d start an acceptance collection. I officially started one today.

I chose a picture of Ina Garten because I admire her — I try to follow Roxane Gay’s credo, quoted on the binder cover, in my own day-to-day — and because when I found the picture of her cookbook, How Easy is That?, I smirked at how she’ll often say that even after preparing something that’s kind of complicated. I thought more deeply about this — as I do — and thought about how cooking seems easy when you’ve done it for years and when you’re seeing the finished product. It can be easy to forget all the ingredients and prep that went into an “easy” scone, just like it can be easy to forget all the failed scones that came before the successful one.

While I don’t consider one acceptance letter to be the perfect scone, I chose that Ina photo because I wanted to remind myself that it took many steps — and many falls — to get to acceptance. It can be easy to forget that it wasn’t easy, that there were drafts and unfinished stories and rejected stories before the first (and hopefully not the last) acceptance came through. I added that picture to help me remember.

I am especially thrilled that my first acceptance was to a Poe-themed anthology. I started reading Poe’s work when I was eleven years old. I did a dramatic reading of the ending of “The Cask of Amontillado” for a sixth grade project (and I, for one, think I was robbed of being selected to go to a district competition, as I put my all into Fortunato’s pleading at the end), and scared myself awake by reading “Hop Frog” right before bed. My friends and I also spent a Poe-themed day in Baltimore two years ago. We visited his home as well as his grave site. We also had a drink at The Horse You Came In On Saloon, where Poe was last seen before his death.

I can’t wait to be a part of “Quoth the Raven,” and can’t wait to read all of the stories included in the anthology. The collection will be released October 7, 2018 — the 169th anniversary of Poe’s death. I’ll share more details as they become available on my Facebook page and my Twitter account.