“I’m Looking for that Heat” in San Antonio Review

When it comes to publishing short stories, you go long, long periods of time without getting something published, and then… WHAM! You find out you’ll be getting a few things published. But it’s not only that, you find out THAT you will be getting stories published, but not always WHEN they’ll be getting published.

And sometimes, you wake up, and you get an email… YOU’RE GETTING PUBLISHED TODAY!

OK, so, I had been awake for an hour or two before this email came in on Monday, but still, it was early. And it was a surprise that I was waiting on. My short story “I’m Looking for that Heat” got published in San Antonio Review. If you’re interested in a quick, funny read, head here.

I had a couple of things that came together when it came to this story getting published. For one, I had recently realized there was a slight disconnect with what kinds of scripts I wrote and what kinds of stories I wrote. I incorporate humor into my stories often enough, but I started to think I wasn’t doing it enough, especially since I almost always did it with my scripts. I felt like the two should probably be more closely related, and also, I felt like comedy is my main strength.

When I was one of the winners of Vocal’s “Too Hot For This” competition in the Humor community, it solidified my thoughts. Yes, humor is my thing. Comedy is my thing. More often, I should incorporate comedy into my stories. It comes naturally, so I shouldn’t shy away from it.

Another part of this was that, among many other places, I had submitted to San Antonio Review multiple times. The first time I submitted… turned down. That was it. The second time I submitted to San Antonio Review, I got the rejection email. And then shortly after, I got a follow-up email from the editor. I remember thinking, “What are they rejecting me for the same piece twice? They must have really hated it.”

No. He emailed me with some extra notes about the story, how they had found it to be good, but it wasn’t quite there. He had some suggestions. I was really appreciative of that, because you don’t always get that. I reread my story and all his notes made sense. So, the first thing I did was to rewrite that story with his notes in mind, and I’ve been submitting it to a bunch of other places. “A Level 3 man in a Level 7 World.” Who knows? Maybe it gets accepted somewhere. By the way, that story, a good deal of humor in it.

But the other thing was that I realized they did like my story at San Antonio Review. Not enough to publish it, but enough to give me some notes and let me know I was close. My theory is, when you’re close with a story, work on it. And when you’re close with a publication, keep submitting to them. They like your writing. There’s a good chance they’ll love something else of yours.

At some point I decided that I should keep submitting to them repeatedly. Write something, send it, await the decision, and if need be, write and submit something else. Well, funny enough, I had that thought and wrote something specifically with San Antonio Review in mind. I submitted it… and really not that long afterwards they sent me an email saying they wanted to accept it. And, yes, it was a humorous story.

I was thrilled!

Then, it was just a matter of waiting for when it would get published.

9/16/26 - I got a story published in Slash Magazine.

9/21/26 - I got this story published in San Antonio Review.

Sometimes when it rains, it pours. I am soaking up the rainfall and relishing in all of it.

Oh yeah, one last thing. This one happened to be my 20th story published! That feels like another milestone to celebrate. 20 stories published! It was 3 years and 3 months ago when I got my first short story published… and now I am at 20. I’m thankful for every publication that has published a story of mine. It is now 14 publications that have.

I’m thankful to San Antonio Review… the latest to do so.