Small, Large, no … Medium!

Well, I wasn’t satisfied with having just one website that no one reads, so I made another one! I’ve set up an account on Medium, everyone’s favorite online publishing platform. My username there is (surprise, surprise) @antpoems, and the address is https://antpoems.medium.com.

There’s not much there yet, but you can read my short satire “A COVID Carol,” which sadly didn’t find a home during the height of the pandemic. Hey, it took me a while to get it right. And soon I’ll be submitting pieces to a few Medium publications, and maybe putting a few more things online myself, so keep checking back!

In other news, my first real (that is, non-silly) poem publication will be appearing online soon! Details and a link coming in a few weeks.

Advertisement

Funny Times

Well, I haven’t updated this in a while, but I’ve been busy lately. However, I do have some good news—my humor piece “Let’s Do The Time Warp Again” is in the latest issue of Funny Times! Woo-hoo!

This is my seventh appearance in Funny Times in the past two years, and I’m always grateful that they appreciate my humor. If you haven’t read them before, give ’em a shot, and support a rare old-school print magazine that’s been going since the ’80s. You could use a few laugh s in your mailbox!

Good things come…

to those who keep spamming the submission queues. I just signed a freelance contract for a new humor article this weekend—woot! More information to come, but not only is this my first acceptance on 2021, it’s the first piece I’ve actually sold on a pitch, rather than as a final product, which makes me feel happy as an ant raiding a picnic basket (they’re not just for Yogi, you know). It’s nice to know that my body of work so far, small though it is, is strong enough to earn an editor’s trust.

I get knocked down, but I get up again…

Every post should include a Chumbawumba reference, don’t you think?

Anyway, last week was rough—I got five rejection emails, including four in one day! That’s definitely a new record for me. But, to quote the aforementioned bards, you’re never gonna keep me down. I finished up a new short story this weekend and sent it right out, then gave two older pieces a little spit and polish and resubmitted them, too. I feel pretty good about all three, so let’s see what happens.

So close, and yet so far

My first bit of posted news is about (drumroll, please) a rejection. Boo! Oh well, them’s the breaks. A writer has to get used to them. This one came from a sci-fi anthology, a full eight months after I had submitted my story. Yes, that’s an excruciatingly long time, but the silver lining is that the story had made it to their final round of cuts. I’ve been getting a lot of close calls like this over the past few months, and they’re very frustrating—I know I’m right on the edge of breaking through, but I’m not quite there yet. But I’ll get there soon. So back out into the wilds you go, my dear story, and I’ll get cracking on some new works to follow you.

Well, here it is…

Long awaited by, well, no one, really, but it’s here anyway—Steve Stampone’s home on the web. Your number one source for information about my budding writing career, as well as fascinating facts about ants. I hope you enjoy it, and that I have worthwhile stuff to post!

Old Memes are so Exciting!