A note about Graveside Press and my short story
Heads up about the Graveside Press stuff. I too had a piece of fiction that was planned to be released by them. It was a short story that was part of a Middle Grade anthology. It hadn’t released yet, so I’m not suffering from lack of royalties like other authors.
I did get the rights back to my story and it will no longer be published by Graveside Press which is really just Steven now (the owner), I believe, who seems to be the reason authors were not getting paid.
If you have a work published or planned to be published by Graveside Press, you can request to have the rights returned to you. There was a FAQs that Steven made in Google Docs that addressed this, but after about a week he made it private. Not sure why. He’s kinda gone silent. Which as I understand is pretty typical behavior for him.
The email for getting your rights back or if you have questions about anything: publishing@graveside-press.com.
When asked for details about what happened and why authors weren’t getting paid, Steven has chosen to not divulge. Telling authors it’s none of their business basically. He also has offered no apologies.
But he’s still planning on publishing works and taking more submissions. So authors beware of that.
Last but not least… there are many good folks who worked inside Graveside Press, often volunteers, who are good people. They have done great work and continue to be an inspiration. But they were all out of the loop on the business side of things. They are good people and it is these people who read and believed in my short story. Many of these folks have left Graveside and some are spinning off their own press @deadfoxpub — give them a follow.
Moving forward with the story.
I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with the short story as I was happy to have it published in an anthology. It’s a Middle Grade sci-fi horror, similar in a way to Blood Frequency and even features an alien that appears in that as well. I’m open to suggestions. One thought would be to make my own anthology of short stories around Blood Frequency. I had been considering doing that. Maybe I should just make this one more piece of that puzzle. The anthology idea was to write a series of short stories that take place in Rolla, Missouri, during the 1990s. This was where and when I came of age, which is what makes it a lot of fun for me. There’s a lot of nostalgia in it.
What do you think? Should I roll with the YA sci-fi/horror anthology idea? Submit this story somewhere else? Publish it here on my own? Sound off in the comments.
