My fantasy short story “Reflections on Discord” is now published in the Winter 2025 edition of The Colored Lens. “Reflections on Discord” follows Adewale, abused hired-help of an expedition to a mysterious city. Adewale dreams of adventure and being free, but his life of servitude offers no hope for that—until his reflection takes on a life of its own. Grab yourself a copy here.
writing
Read Nelly’s World for Free (Gamut Magazine Archives)
You can now read my sci-fi story “Nelly’s World” for free in Gamut Magazine.
The story was published in issue #11 only a few months ago. Unfortunately, Gamut Magazine has now closed after a single year of excellent issues. But the editors have kindly lowered the paywall, and put the stories into this free-to-read archive.

Ten Thousand Years Walking the Godsroad, published in Trollbreath Magazine
My fantasy story “Ten Thousand Years Walking the Godsroad” is now available in Issue #2 of Trollbreath Magazine. This story follows Harnivel, spin doctor of the gods, as he navigates a sentient magical road to escape imprisonment in the underworld—but the road is long, and the road has plans of its own.
This is a weird story that was great fun to write, and is part of a wider range of stories featuring Harnivel. Hopefully it’s the first of several publications in this line.
Nelly’s World, reprinted in Gamut Magazine
My sci-fi story “Nelly’s World”, originally published in the anthology Divergent Realms: Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories About Neurodivergence, has been reprinted in issue #11 of Gamut Magazine.

“Nelly’s World” follows a father struggling to connect with his neurodiverse daughter Nelly, following the death of his wife. His only chance to get through to Nelly may lie in the immersive artificial-reality video game in which she spends her days.
Rejectomancy Summary 2024
This year I’ve written the more short stories and poems than any year previously, and it’s only October. Things have been going well—I’ve sold five stories, one poem, and have six pieces being held by editors for further consideration—but there’s also been more rejection than ever as well.
Only a short time ago, such volumes of rejections would have really set me back. Even a major sale doesn’t make up for a couple of rejections from smaller markets—the brain simply isn’t wired that way. Our loss aversion bias often kicks in and overrides any logical assessment (for details see The Decision Lab’s primer on loss aversion).
But I’ve been lucky enough to have met some great artists over the last year, who have been kind enough to share details on how things are really going, behind the carefully managed hype they’re obliged to present on sales channels and social media.
So here’s a quick summary of my stats for the year so far (since 1st Jan 2024):
All | Poems | Short stories | |
Submissions | 262 | 29 | 233 |
Acceptances | 6 | 1 | 5 (2 reprints) |
Withdrawals | 8 | 0 | 8 |
Form rejections | 158 | 16 | 142 |
Personal rejections | 27 | 3 | 24 |
No response | 3 | 0 | 3 |
Pending response | 60 | 9 | 51 |
And here’s a breakdown of percentages in each category, excluding pending responses:
Acceptances | 3% |
Withdrawals | 4% |
Form rejections | 78% |
Personal rejections | 13% |
No response | 2% |
A 3% acceptance rate isn’t fantastic, but it isn’t terrible either—especially considering that I’ve been focusing on higher-tier markets this year with acceptance rates in the <1% range. Also, while I’m still new to this, I’ve heard from many seasoned short story writers that this year has been especially difficult when it comes to landing sales. Many pros haven’t managed to land any sales at all, so I’m counting myself lucky.
Some of the stories currently being held by editors will translate to further sales. There’s also the magic bag of pending submissions; if we assume that the 3% sales rate holds then we’d expect another 2 sales. We can get a conservative estimate of the final sales count by assuming maybe 2 of the 6 stories being held will sell; altogether we’d have 10 sales from 262 submissions, around 4% of the total.
And then, of course, there’s the rest of the year to play with.