Big publishing news
Remember that short story I wrote some months back, Mycelial?
It was about a mycelial network abandoning a member of its collective after they were showered in human blood, and that single outcast reading the dead human’s mind, developing a personality, turning that into a lust for control over reality.
So, the normal Phillip Carter stuff.
It was my most popular story.
So I deleted it.
Just kidding, I have removed the story from Substack and from all digital bookshelves and retailers, however, because of an interesting development in my writing life. Here’s a clue a robot drew.
It’s me selling a story to a moth.
Get it yet?
I sold the rights for Mycelial to Cinnabar Moth Press a few weeks back. I sent the story to them for their consideration for their Feb 2024 publication, and they loved it. So it’s going to be theirs to play with for a year or so.
This is big news for me. I didn’t plan on submitting stories to any presses again any time soon, and had even cancelled some pitching ideas I had, but I bumped into Cinnabar on twitter and felt they stood out as truly independent. They care about presenting interesting stories to the world, and that is exactly what I got into publishing for, too.
So I sent Mycelial, and they took it.
Which means it’s not going to show up in WKTH.
And I’d like to congratulate my friend Ruth for guessing the title of that correctly.
So Ruth wins a 6 month paid membership to the special tier of this Substack.
I’m not telling you all the title of WKTH yet, because I want to give one more person a chance to win.
Any clue what WKTH stands for?
And now the free Science Fiction promo.
This is a massive one, loads of totally free stories. A few of mine are on there, too, including EARTHLOOP, THE COSMIC COMEDY COLLECTION, HOLOGRAM KEBAB, AND WHO BUILT THE HUMANS?
EL - several free chapters
TCCC - my full free story from the book, RAWR OF THE WURLDS XD
HK - A full, free story
WBTH - several free chapters
Sharing my stuff helps me reach more readers, which helps me sell books, which means I have more resources to make more weird stuff.
By the way, if you like that AI-generated image of me shaking hands with Cinnabar as I sell my story to them, feel free to use it. I don't think AI content should be classed as your own, especially considering how easy it is to replicate (simply describe this image to bing's image generator and it might churn out something almost the same).
This is not my image.
I told a robot what to draw.
This is where you submit chapters from a book or story.