Mad Swirl is a great literary magazine that publishes quality short stories among other things. In 2024, they featured three of mine but this year I hadn’t sent them anything until it was almost summer and as time elapsed, I realized I had sent them a story I had been experimenting with which some might find objectionable due to some violence amidst some possibly objectionable circumstances. I thought “Shit, what was I thinking? They won’t/can’t take this.”

Well, life has been rough lately so it was a pleasant surprise to hear from their fiction editor some days ago to let me know they are featuring the story “Change Redux” this week! I’ve been so busy, I haven’t even had a chance to respond and say thanks but I did want to get a mention of it up now since we’re moving past mid-week. I wanted to announce it while it’s still viable.

So thanks to the good people at Mad Swirl for publishing my story and featuring it this week. I know they’re (you’re) taking a chance on it as it’s a touch out of character for both of us. (What I didn’t tell the editors was I had written it to be much more arbitrarily violent but when I decided to submit it to Mad Swirl, I decided to write a new ending to give the flawed protagonist a slight sense of possible self awareness by the end to go with the possible sense of a conscious — both of which are relatively new for him — and the reader can determine how and if that might impact this character in the future, especially if he ever shows up in another such story.) I’m curious if readers express anything about it, and how it might go over. I mean, I write a lot of microfiction, dirty realism, speculative fiction, horror, metafiction, some experimental pieces, but when I move towards violence — especially arbitrary-seeming violence — it’s usually in a market that caters more to that specifically. While I don’t think of this story as particularly violent, it’s the rude, crude, senselessness displayed by the protagonist that, I think, takes it a step beyond my norm for publications not prone toward hardcore horror (not that this comes within a tiny sliver of that, more of an expression). Yeah, the violence isn’t too bad, but it’s the cruelty, I think, and I’m curious to see if/how readers may respond, so FEEDBACK IS ENCOURAGED.

But enough babbling. Check out Mad Swirl and check out my story, Change Redux, and feel free to like, comment or whatever.

BTW, I hit 100+ publications in the first 7 months of 2025 recently, which is about twice the publishing rate of the past 1.5 years. Yay?

I try to put new publications up on my sidebar to let people know but would it help — or would anyone care — if I were to put together a more formal and visible page with links to all of my ongoing 2025 publications for people to have available if interested? Because these types of posts are the ones that get the most interest/views, so I want to be as accommodating as I realistically can. Please let me know what you think about that and thanks!

Cheers!

Scott