"Write About Dogs!"

George Booth of The New Yorker has a fairly famous cartoon with the caption I've just used as a title. A frazzled male writer sits on the porch of a weathered beachside house, typewriter before him, blank page fed into typewriter, as his wife offers advice. Several dogs loaf on the floor around him.

Clearly I write about dogs. In fact, two semi-fictional works about Sunny are now accepted. One is in print at Emerald Tales, and I've been strictly ordered to tell all future readers that it needs a tissue warning. Another, a little flashfic, has been accepted at Ruthless Peoples Magazine -- to my great surprise and delight, since I submitted it yesterday.

However, sometimes I write about non-dog subjects, too, and while questing for markets I came across a call for Hint Fiction. What's hint fiction? Robert Swartwood, who seems to have invented the term, defines it as "a story of 25 words or less that suggests a larger, more complex story." For details, if you think this sounds like something fun, go to http://www.robertswartwood.com/?page_id=8 for the anthology guidelines. Personally, I mean to give it a try. If nothing else, brevity hones the writing tools. Besides, a dollar a word on acceptance is pretty darned fine.