An old short story of mine, "Security," has reached the quarterfinalist level in ScreenCraft's Cinematic Short Story Competition. I had a little success with this contest last year with my stories "Bell" and "Real-Life Experiences," so I decided to give it another try. The contest is designed to find prose stories with cinematic adaptation potential. "Security," originally published in Barrelhouse and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, is the story of an anxious security guard who's well aware that if this were a spy movie, he'd be an expendable character who has five seconds of screen time before being killed by the super-agent.
My novel A Travelogue for the Wasteland was a finalist for the University of New Orleans' 2021 Publishing Lab Prize. Although it didn't ultimately win the prize, it did make it to the final round, and that is encouraging.
My short story "Diedrick Doge" has been published in Story, a literary magazine I've had my sights on for a long time. The story was a finalist for the Story Foundation Prize, and it's about a packing plant worker who, faced with an imminent plant closing and a family to support, decides to try becoming a car salesman. "Diedrick Dodge" appears in Issue #11 of Story, which you can buy here.