Author Archives: Julie Sondra

New Completed Short Story: “The Juicy Ones”

Posted on by

Don’t ask me why, but I decided to write about a monster hunter today?

I got an idea for a concept I just wanted to crank out, and less than an hour later, a new flash fiction piece had come into being. I decided to title it “The Juicy Ones,” weighing in at about 900 words.

Very short fiction is not my thing, as anyone who knows me is well aware. So it’s always exciting when something very short and sweet comes to me, giving me a crack at opportunities to sell short fiction that I usually don’t have. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say it’s short and sweet, because it’s very much not a sweet story.

Dina is a monster hunter and she has her own reasons for not wanting to fight particularly juicy monsters. Her boss doesn’t care to accommodate her. One day after being sent after a juicy one and coming back covered in monster guts, she has it out with her boss and then reflects in a private moment.

That’s it. Ya know, after writing multiple adventurer stories where no one goes on an adventure (on the page) and then writing a monster-hunter story where nobody fights a monster (on the page), I’m starting to think I’m doing it wrong.

New Completed Short Story: “To Greater Heights”

Posted on by

I’m really enjoying writing about my adventurers lately. Another tie-in to “In Your Favor.” This time covering some immediate aftermath of that story while picking up with another group of quest-seekers!

“To Greater Heights” is a chonker at 15,000 words. (Initially it was over 17,000, but I have edited it down.) It gets the job done in far less space than “In Your Favor,” but it’s a similar story in that it covers another group of adventurers approaching the same issue as the previous story: coming to the end of their training and getting a magical gift to help them on the rest of their journey. (They cross paths with the previous group in the very beginning.) I started this story on October 16 and finished the first draft on October 24.

Holden struggled to find a permanent position on an adventuring crew until he met Serafina, a determined young woman who’s had a rocky road to leadership. While he admires her strength and drive, he’s frustrated at her self doubt. He wishes she could see in herself what he sees in her. He’s ready to trust her to lead their team of six into their final quest of their training before hitting the real world as credentialed adventurers: receiving their magic powers. But Holden has one huge hangup: most quest locations in the adventuring life are accessed through magical airships, and Holden is afraid of heights.

Serafina and Holden, along with their groupmates Argon, Glen, Arlo, and Winter, find themselves quickly manifesting magic talents in the usual tradition after their ritual, but misunderstanding the magic leads to a series of life-threatening catastrophes. And magic has something deeply unsettling in store for Holden, which not only threatens his sanity but calls Serafina’s leadership into doubt–something he never wanted for either of them. He must prove to his team–and himself–that he can rise to the occasion.

I have some thoughts on where I want to send this baby! We shall see.

 

Accepted short story: “A Shadow to Light”

Posted on by

So this is an odd one. I got an acceptance for my short story “A Shadow to Light.” I’ve received a publishing offer from a nice little anthology called The Mystic’s Pen, Volume 2, put out by The Edge.

I wrote “A Shadow to Light” in 2024 because I wanted to try writing in a world that was already established in some of my other work. In this case, I did something unprecedented: I pulled from a weekly webcomic called Negative One that I’ve been writing since the year 2005. And Negative One in turn is developed from novels I wrote in college. (I turned them into a webcomic for a low-pressure way to love on the characters and their situation without trying to bend them into the constraints of the publishing industry.) The relatively (well, for me) complex worldbuilding of the otherworldly dimension was featured in the comic for such a short time because the protagonist left and she doesn’t remember it. I wanted to do something else with all that work I’d done.

So I adapted a situation originally referenced in the comic into a cool story about the protagonist and her teacher, and a new friend coming into the mix. They argue about shadows and dimensional travel and who’s the boss of whom. Sometimes you just need a vacation.

I’m interested to see how well the story carries over to print form. Considering that’s its distant roots, I hope it survives the transition very well.

New Completed Short Story: “Getting Lucky”

Posted on by

Another new story has come out of my leaky pen today.

I got a quick idea while I was browsing through some short fiction markets. An editor who held onto one of my stories for a while before passing and indicated they wanted to see my other work, and when I revisited their website, I thought of something I could write for them. And even better, it involves some characters I’ve been in love with for a while now. It has a tie-in to “In Your Favor.” And it involves some aftermath of that story’s events.

“Getting Lucky” is about 6,000 words of my character Amber, fresh from her final trials of adventurer school, heading home to tell her foster family how she’s transformed since her adventurer group received their magical talents. It’s sadder than I’d expected, considering Amber frequently brought the comic relief and a lot of goofiness in the original story. It explores what belonging (and not) is about for her, and how she’s feeling about her future with the adventuring team now that she’s had some time to settle in.

I’ll offer it around to some possible markets soon!

New Completed (Revamped) Short Story: “Just Like Stephen”

Posted on by

So I finally did something I’ve been meaning to do a LONG time. I revamped another short story that I originally wrote about twenty years ago. And it’s less than half the length of the first version.

Originally written in 2005, the first version of “Just Like Stephen” meandered a lot and stayed stuck in the protagonist’s head a lot, had a lot of fluff and digressions, and didn’t really handle its back-and-forth transitions with much finesse. I still thought the meat of this story was decent and wanted to completely rewrite it someday, especially since I’d shared the old version online. The new version that I have now finished revamping has completely original text except for the characters’ names and a few lines I liked. It’s entirely a different story, but it’s got some shared bones.

I had it on the list to rewrite sometime this year but when I saw a cool submissions call that I thought this would fit, I went ahead and did it. I did the majority of the writing on October 4, knocked out its ending October 5, and did some editing on it for a couple days before declaring it done. I hope it can make its way into the world soon!

This one is about a guy who has a secret case of poorly defined magic that he has to hide or he’ll basically be institutionalized, and he knows all about it because it happened to his older brother. This is about one day in his life when he has to solve a problem with magic and not let anyone know he’s doing so. Can’t clock back in late from lunch break, after all.

Accepted short story: “The Wagon”

Posted on by

So now I have some news that is near and dear to my heart. Another piece of my short fiction has been accepted to an anthology. This time, it’s my story “The Wagon.” It has been selected for publication in Space Ace.

Space Ace is an anthology put out by Farlands Fiction meant to center asexual and aromantic characters and connect to the theme of space.

So cool, right? Well, I thought so too, when I saw the submissions call. But as I’ve said in my first post about “The Wagon,” I had a story that fit that theme but I already sold it. (That one’s coming out in an aromantic-specific anthology, Common Bonds 3.) And I was annoyed that I didn’t have a piece to contribute when the subject was something I like so much!

So, I did what made sense. I wrote one.

With the word count cap up at 10,000 words, I figured I’d be safe from my usual issues, but that turned out to not be true. The first draft was over 13,000 words and I had to hack it down. I didn’t want to consider doing otherwise, because truthfully I wrote this for them. It’s pretty specific to the call and it doesn’t just tack either of the required elements on; it makes space and the asexual/aromantic identity of the protagonist integral.

And then I got kind of stressed out about whether I would get in. I watched some of the stats and started trying to guess if people getting rejected who’d submitted after me meant my story was being held. I theorized about what competition I had. I got invested in a way that I typically don’t about submissions. I guess that’s all a sign of how much I really wanted to be a part of the project.

And I got my wish.

It’s especially awesome that it’s NOT a quick little shot-off story–it’s a substantial piece that I cared a lot about while knocking it out, and I really wanted people to be able to experience it. I love when a lovingly written piece for a specific place leads to a story with no rejections, never made to be anywhere else.

I’ll give details about “The Wagon’s” publication as soon as I have anything to release. Until then, here’s the short pitch:

“The Wagon” involves six friends–Aimee, Lora, Juana, Sadie, Gerry, and Tuan–who became an inseparable group during their college years. They have significantly altered their lives so they could happily live and work on the same space station. But when one of them disappears without warning on a mission to pursue a cure for a deadly illness in a dangerous corner of the galaxy, the rest have to track her down with few clues in case she’s in over her head. And in the midst of losing a groupmate who’s closer than family, Lora dodges the poorly conceived romantic attentions of her coworker Richie, who is determined to marry her because she is the only woman who’s ever beaten him at chess.

 

Accepted short story: “Karma Is Dead”

Posted on by

I’m excited to say my short story–more accurately, novella–“Karma Is Dead” has been selected for publication in the Longer Worlds anthology by Lightning Cellar. Announcements will be made when there are dates to know and links to click!

“Karma” had a strange ride getting out into the world. I did something I rarely do: I started a short story and finished it much later. (And of course, since it’s me, the story ended up at around 20,000 words. It slimmed down to about 19,000 to go on submission to publishers.) I started writing it during a vacation and completing it more than a year later. It ran away from me a little, and though the basic idea of the story was always there (including the ending), the actual storytelling was quite different than my original conception. I love when that happens and I feel like I’m discovering a person and a place.

Since it’s enormous and typical short story publishers will not touch 19k, I was left with either very specific submissions calls or book publishers.

I submitted it around, and first I got interest from a publisher who kept writing me back asking for more information. Can I send the draft in another format? Can I provide a bio? And then they ghosted me after acting interested. The next publisher who was interested is the one I ended up signing with. They liked the story but couldn’t commit to having me in the anthology for sure, and asked to hold the story for consideration. This is common enough, but sometimes publishers want exclusivity at this point, and this publisher was kind enough to say I could continue to shop it around since they couldn’t commit yet. Very nice of them.

And then I did end up getting a THIRD response from a publisher who also wanted to hold it for consideration! Their issue was being primarily a book publisher and they were honest with me saying they weren’t sure what they’d do with a story my size. (Ironically, because it was SHORTER than what they usually deal with it.) They asked if they could hold it while they figured out what kind of offer they could give me. I gave them full disclosure saying another publisher had also put it on hold. They were fine with that.

But then I got the offer on October 1, 2026, and after checking with the other publisher who still wasn’t ready to offer me anything (but hopes I’ll show them some future projects!), I signed with Lightning Cellar for the Longer Worlds anthology.

(It did also get one really weird rejection saying I should send it to a different specific publisher, and that publisher ONLY works with fanfiction authors. I guess they assumed I am a fanfiction author because my character is?)

Short pitch:

Karma Is Dead features a young woman who’s been on her own since surviving a mass extinction, but she believes she died in the plague and identifies as a ghost. When she meets Brianne after more than two years of being alone, their mutual attraction and desperation for company brings them together, but there’s a catch: neither of them can speak, and one of them is dead. Their relationship begins in handwritten letters as they live in the same house, but as Brianne brings Karma into her life of haphazard errands and backyard farming, she needs definition for Karma’s supposed afterlife. She deserves the truth if she’s supposed to date the undead. They adopt a quest to find the story of Karma’s true end, which eventually reconnects her with forgotten elements of her past–some of which she’s grateful to have back; some of which are extremely nerdy secrets that Brianne might judge her for. But when Karma unearths Brianne’s own dark secret–which is bizarrely connected to her own–she finds herself judging when she expected to be judged. Is this an irreconcilable difference, or are they more alike than they thought?
This one is close to my heart and deals with some of my favorite things: complex interaction, cartoon nerds, hard decisions, and apologies.

New Completed Short Story: “Home to the Sky”

Posted on by

A last-minute decision to write a story I was thinking about while walking to the post office has manifested in this. A new story!

Inspired by the passion some of the writers I’m talking to seem to have for shorter stories, I checked out a few of the submissions calls for shorter stories than what I usually write, and I really liked one market’s mission statement about what kinds of relationships they want to publish stories about. I can write about that, I thought.

So I did.

I am typically more of a discover-it-as-you-go writer (“a pantser,” as we are colloquially called), but I’ve found on shorter stories that the concept more or less IS the plot, and if you know the point you want to make, the journey to get there is a straight line. I’m definitely more used to figuring out what my characters want to say by letting them say it. This is not better or worse, but it is less comfortable.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

I only had a couple “pantser” moments when things I didn’t intend to click DID click together, but mostly it was a pretty intentionally written story and I enjoyed seeing a story be FINISHED at less than 2,000 words.

“Home to the Sky” happens in a strange world where when kids become adults, their parents select a sort of magical token for them. A woman’s son is on the brink of this and she wants to give him the token he’s asked for, but the boy’s father wants him to have something else. The resolution to this problem also offers a revelation about the mother and father’s relationship.

Still a little creeped out by these tiny word counts.

New Completed Short Story: “Not My Sister”

Posted on by

What the heck’s going on here?

Long story short (perhaps a theme developing here?), I was looking for more opportunities to talk to other writers because I’m lonely for their companionship, started engaging more on Bluesky, and found myself invited to a writerly Discord server. I’ve only been there a couple days and they ended up . . . kind of talking me into writing flash fiction?

It seems like a lot of the folks on the server like writing really short stories. That is not my scene, as anyone who’s ever met me knows. They were throwing around submissions calls for stories up to 1,000 words (ONE THOUSAND WORDS???), and I somehow wrote one in less than two hours, cleaned it up, and sent it to the submissions call my server-mates mentioned (because I didn’t want to miss out–they had a cap on how many stories they would accept into the queue).

Anyway, “Not My Sister” is about a kid accusing her sister of being a changeling and getting Grandma in on it.

And it’s soft horror, which is also something I’ve never done in my life.

WHAT HAVE I BECOME.