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Delaware, United States
Deborah Hawkins, penned Debra Renée Byrd, began writing after a blank book project in elementary school and never stopped, fashioning stories based on her favorite TV shows and movies before creating more original works. She studied at the University of the Arts and Florida State University before settling down and graduating from Temple University. She now resides in her hometown of Dover, DE, where she spends most of her time at work or at church. She loves fantasies, superheroes, is a trekkie and a brown coat. She loves television and lives for Final Fantasy video games, having collected most of them. She has read a myriad of authors, and her favorite authors change whenever she finds a new book that changes her life... "When you can't run, you crawl. When you can't crawl...well, you know the rest." -Tracey, Firefly, "The Message"

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Thursday, January 22, 2015

Look for Me in Cactus Heart Press! (w/gifs)

I was trying to hold this news in until Friday for Freeday, but forget it!

My short story "Origin" will be published in the Speculative Fiction issue of Cactus Heart Press this March!


So, how it happened. As you may have seen, I did a live write-up of "Origin" here 2-1/2 years ago (really? It was that long ago?!) based on the song "Origin of Love" from Hedwig and the Angry Inch (which I finally sat down and watched last week and LOVED).

Late December, Kate Sheeran Swed e-mailed me. She will be the guest editor for Cactus Heart's Speculative Fiction issue, and she had read "Origin" and invited me to submit to the publication. I immediately turned into


then asked if I could submit "Origin." She spoke with the main Cactus Heart team, and as long as I removed the story from here, I could submit. No problem there! So last week, I received the confirmation that they accepted my little short story.




(I can't even pretend like these aren't my actual victory dances.)

This is big for me, as it would be for any writer, so I'm extremely excited, and having bought Cactus Heart Press's last issue and seeing what they are about, I know it's a perfect fit. I'm playing it cool, but:




About Cactus Heart Press:

"Cactus Heart is, of course, a metaphor for how we believe literature and art should be. It should shock and wound and delight us; it should fill us with delight and terror and mystery. It should survive.

We are devoted to spiny writing & art—sharp, relentless, coursing with energy and able to thrive in the harshest of places, all while maintaining a vulnerable, succulent interior."


About Kate Sheeran Swed:

Kate Sheeran Swed loves hot chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and airplane tickets. She has trekked along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, hiked on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, and climbed the ruins of Masada to watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea. Following an idyllic childhood in New Hampshire, she completed degrees in music at the University of Maine and Ithaca College, then moved to New York City. Her stories have appeared in Writing Tomorrow,Verdad, HOOT Review, and Words and Images. She recently completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific University.

You can find her on:
Twitter @katesheeranswed
Facebook.com/KateSheeranSwedPinterest.com/KateSheeranSwed

4 comments:

Sarah Foster said...

Woo! Congrats! That's incredibly awesome.

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Congratulations, Debra! Such good news - why wait?

Heather R. Holden said...

Oh, wow, how exciting! No wonder you couldn't wait till Friday to share this. Congrats! ~\o/~

Anonymous said...

Thanks, y'all! :D