First, I’d like to remind everyone that I am hosting an “online writers’ virtual coffeehouse” on Thursday at 7:30 PM (EST), where I and other participants will discuss a wide range of writing- and publishing-related topics, from the writing process to marketing and promotions. If you’re a writer — of any kind, of any experience or interest level — you can learn more about it at my Facebook page. Go there and click on the “events” tab.

The big productive news this week is that I wrote and submitted a short story for an upcoming anthology to be published by the Superhero Fiction group. The theme is superhero romance, and fortunately, I had a concept for a pulp hero story lying around waiting to be used. I was able to write in up, get it out to beta-readers, and put the final polish on it within a week, so now I get to wait to hear whether it’s been accepted.

I’d love to get in on this anthology, but I promise that if it doesn’t make it, I’ll publish it for everyone to enjoy in some fashion.

Side note: the story was originally intended for a pulp hero anthology, but I ended up passing on that because the publisher wasn’t going to pay the contributors. Any revenue generated by sales would belong to the publisher to fund his own small press. Uh, no.

That leads me to today’s word of advice: if an anthology doesn’t offer the contributors some kind of financial compensation, avoid it — especially if the publisher plans to also hold onto the rights to your submission for an unreasonable length of time. The one possible exception is if the anthology is a fundraiser for charitable purposes, but if the publisher isn’t going to share the wealth with the writers? Hard pass.