After proudly telling the world (which is, literally, tens of people) I’d finally gotten not one, but two stories accepted for publication last month, next I did the only thing I could—I waited. And waited. I realized that I had no idea when either magazine/journal would actually come out, and started to feel a little uncomfortable that perhaps I’d tooted my own horn a little prematurely. Friday I finally got word that one of them is officially out, on the market and available for sale.

The Rusty Nail Literary Journal May/June issue is out now! Hard copies are available for purchase from Amazon here, and digital downloads are available at their website here. In it you will find my flash fiction piece “Aiden’s Acting Up Again.”

It’s a bit surreal, after all this time finally seeing my name and my words in a real-life, published product. It feels pretty cool.

“Aiden” is a bit of an anomaly compared to a lot of my other stuff. For one thing, there’s not a single curse word, which I can assure you, despite the generally PG-rated nature of the blog most of the time, is pretty rare indeed.

Also, no one dies, making it one of maybe two or three of my stories with a goose egg in the body count department.

This story began as part of my Reddit ‘No Sleep’ Experiment. I uploaded it to /r/nosleep and it was fairly popular, with readers asking for more ‘updates’ to the story. I ended up writing two additional pieces to bring the story to an end, but I rushed through them and don’t really like them. I honestly think Aiden is perfect as a stand alone story, ending the way it does on an unnerving note.

Check out the story (and the entire issue for that matter, it’s chock-full of other great stories), I hope you like it!