Submitted for your approval - January 2020 edition

I started out with an entry on New Year's Eve. It was the only December submission, so I decided to count it here. I would have submitted it much earlier except I had a question about the process that wasn't covered in the submission rules. I'd emailed them a couple weeks earlier for clarification, but because of the holidays they weren't able to get back to me until December 31 and since the entry fee was going up effective January 1, I decided to get it in at the last minute.

This is contest is for works (books, plays, and short stories) that have been published. They judge the potential for adaptation into film and/or television. I submitted "Crime Drama/Do Not Cross" since it's the only thing I've had published so far (at least until next month, when Crossing Borders is released). I have no idea if "Crime Drama" is film material, but I thought I'd give it a shot. Unfortunately, the final deadline isn't until August 31, so it will be a while until they announce.

The second and third submissions were existing stories that matched the themes for two upcoming crime/mystery anthologies. I took an editing swing through each one, and one needed a lot more work than I'd anticipated. That one was submitted mid-month, the other one just a couple days ago. The mid-month one will announce by April 1 and I have reasons to have high hopes for it. Even better, it will be published in June, so that would give me two published stories in the first half of the year. I'm not sure if the other anthology will be published this year or early next year. They didn't give announcement or publication dates.

February and March should be busy. There are two more February deadlines, plus a March 1 deadline for what will be a high profile annual anthology. There's also three other markets with March deadlines (11th, 22nd, and 31st) that I'd like to submit to.

Also (as I mentioned here) we received images showing the cover of Crossing Borders, which will be available for pre-order soon. When it is, I'll update the image in the left sidebar to include a link for ordering. Crossing Borders is the first anthology from Partners in Crime, the San Diego Chapter of Sisters in Crime. It will be officially released in mid-March, in conjunction with the Left Coast Crime Conference, which is being held in San Diego this year.

Now, back to my regularly scheduled writing.