I'm all disappointed. One of my favourite sites for market listings has closed. Ralan.com specialised in speculative fiction publications in all genres–horror, science fiction and fantasy throughout the spectrum–and all lengths and forms from poetry to novels, audio to print. Over the years I found many of the publications my work has appeared in there. I don't know why it's closed, but the site must have required considerable time and effort to keep up, and I'd like to give the guy behind it my thanks.
Thank goodness the Diabolical Plots' Submission Grinder is still going. It sends weekly market updates, mostly for speculative and literary work, including when submissions periods are due to open and close. You can find it at https://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com.
One market that will be opening again for submissions is Third Flatiron Anthologies. It won't be accepting manuscripts until May, but that gives everyone time to write something on the theme, which is 'Rhapsody'. Check out the website at http://thirdflatiron.com to discover their previous anthologies.
The chief editor of Third Flatiron Anthologies, Juliana Rew, has been busy producing an anthology of her own writing, titled 'Twelve All in Dread: The Twelfth Witch and Other Stories. I'm really looking forward to reading it. I'll be reviewing it, but if you want to form your own opinion, you can get a copy from Amazon.
I've now heard about the anthology my story, 'The Adult Prodigy', is due to appear in. It's due out in March and I'm hoping for a launch party to celebrate. I'll give more details as soon as I get them.
There's another project in its early stages that I'm working on with Get the Word Out, involving live performance. It's still in the kicking-ideas-around stage at the moment, so watch this space!
Now, I'm off to gloat over two beautiful books that I've wanted to own ever since I was at primary school and my teacher read them to the class–namely The Iliad and The Odyssey by Barbara Leonie Picard with excellent illustrations by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. They were first printed in the 1950s, and it's taken a long time to find both the editions I wanted, but it was worth the wait. I was so inspired by them then that I made my own versions.