Frodo By The Numbers
This past Memorial Day marked four years that I've been writing full-time. Much of that work is stuff few readers of this blog have ever seen, such as my debut novel -- Gumshoe Frankenstein -- to be published (I hope) in 2027, and a second novel -- Free To Play -- which is in the early stages of querying for agents and publishers.
When I began in earnest to build a writing career, I figured it would take me five years to get a novel into print, and I might just make it. What I didn't anticipate when commiting to Gumshoe Frankenstein is that I would first establish myself as a short story writer.
I've had some success with short stories, winning awards with Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and being published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and elsewhere, which has come as a welcome surprise. Writing short stories was experimental for me, something I did to keep my writing momentum rolling while taking a breath on longer work, generally when completing an act break or a major draft of a novel. That I've sold nearly every short story I've written while my novels are still awaiting print might be trying to tell me something -- which is, as a novelist, my stubborn head could be best suited to breaking rocks.
Regardless, I continue to identify as a novelist, and that's mostly what I write. Maybe someday you'll get to read my books.
In the meantime, there are my short stories, and the first short story I wrote while embarking on this new career finally found a home with the publication of Big Smoke Pulp Volume 2, containing my short story “A Finger For Frodo.” As you might imagine for a story I wrote four years ago, the path to publication for this story was a winding road. This is the story I had in mind when I said you never give up on a lost cat. I despaired of the story ever finding a home and each time it came back I came to view it more and more as a steamer trunk from an old Looney Toons cartoon, bound with reinforcing ropes and festooned with travel stickers from far away places with strange-sounding names.
Depending on how you look at it, the publication of “A Finger For Frodo” is either vindication after long years of wandering in the wilderness, or another example of the hard-headed nature that I trust will some day secure my success as a novelist. When a story takes 1026 days to sell (!) and earns you a few pennies less than fourteen bucks (!!) you might conclude the market is trying to tell you something, and that what it is telling you is this story is no good.
BUT!
It is published!
“A Finger For Frodo” has a terrific opening line, it zooms along and has some surprises, and it ends up being the origin story of the character that later appeared in “Strangers On A Train On A Train” over at Alfred Hitchcock, and it features characters and locations I later revisited in my yet-to-be-published novel, Free To Play. It might be my ugliest child but it is my child none-the-less, and I love it like all my other hideous progeny.
This is a By The Numbers post, so here are some numbers:
Submissions: 26
Never Responded: 2
Withdrawn: 1
Personal Rejections With A Hint of Encouragement: 5
Form Letter Rejections Which Leave It Up To My Imagination: 18
The story was completed in December of 2022 and at that time was titled "The Fingerman" and ran almost twice as long as the slim 2000-word story that eventually saw print. It went through multiple revisions as it came back, sometimes targeted to the next market I had in mind, and eventually settling into what it is -- a brisk piece of Gameshop Noir (if there is such a thing, and now I guess there is).
Work Sessions: 22
Time To Complete (Approximate): 17 hours
Most of my short stories come in closer to ten hours of writing time ... 17 hours on Frodo feels a little low, but my time records are estimates, as I recorded sessions but not minutes in 2022. Regardless, even if my time was 25-ish hours (which feels about right), that's not bad for a story that saw so many significant revisions, where I was figuring out short stories as I went.
Select log notes:
11/21/22
Moving to “The Fingermen” short story. Target is 2500-4000 words. Got through outlining plot of the first “act.”
11/24
500 words and not to the game store yet. I like the urgency of a short story word count.
11/27
My outline has fractured a bit but this does feel like the mid-point of the story, so maybe the outline needs to go. The tone of the story is proving lighter than I expected.
11/30
Calling the first draft done at 3500 words. I’ll give it one more pass and then let it sit. It has evolved as a suspense story that may be too gonzo. I need to revisit tone, and think on how suspense beats are different from the mystery beats I was kinda-sorta following.
12/16
I think I’m done.
(How little I knew)
7/28/23
One more bit of trimming before shoving this orphan into the storm. I have this story in four markets now, so I might get burned. I should be so lucky that two places want one of my stories!
9/14/23
Fingerman came back, so I gave it a read and an edit. Since revision on my novel have me in a cutting frenzy I slashed the story down to 2400 words to open it up for a couple new markets. It is now “A Finger For Frodo.”
4/13/24
Frodo came back (again), so I put it in (again) after researching every available market (again).
7/27
Frodo came back (again, again), so I re-formatted the story, changed the name of the main character to comport with Cassy in my Train story, and punched up the theme of Cassy wanting to run. Once more into the breach.
6/14/25
Poor old Frodo came back, so I cut it by 400 words, added some period references, and submitted it to a Gen-X anthology.
10/10
SOLD! to Big Smoke Pulp! Christ almighty, 1000+ days in the market. And it still has to Kickstart.
My thanks to Adriano Ariganello at Pesto Comics for seeing something in this story that apparantly only I could see, and including it in Big Smoke Pulp Volume 2!
A final observation about this long-in-the-telling tale. A writer's responsibility to a story does not conclude when they type, "THE END." Because I regard selling my work as a part of the creative whole (and because of my aforementioned stubbornness), finishing a story intitiates a chain of obligation for seeing the thing into print.
This can be a non-trivial amount of work. Each of the 26 submissions of this piece required time to research markets, compose cover letters, edit the piece for each market's submission requirements, and time to put the thing in and then track its progress. If and when it sells you are on the hook to promote the title to social media, and blog about it, too!
It is it's own kind of work and I don't shy away from it ... but I will admit it gives me pause about experimenting with new genres or dashing off stories with little hope of selling. I am loathe to retire a story -- I've done it only twice -- and good sense dictates I maybe should have given up on "A Finger For Frodo," as well.
(I'm glad I didn't).