"The Cold Truth" and "Mirror, Mirror on the Screen" are in print!

My flash fiction sci-fi space opera story, "The Cold Truth" is now available at Everyday Fiction. Be sure to head over and check it out.

Neil and his buddy will be the first to dive under Neptune's clouds. What will they find within the Ice Giant?

Also, coming out October 1, in Resident Aliens is my micro flash fiction, "Mirror, Mirror on the Screen" that won an honorable mention in their contest. Be sure to read that as well, you will enjoy the irony, and there are sure to be several good micro flashes there. Obviously, since a few beat mine, they have to be pretty good. Eh?

Thanks for reading!

Copple's Creations

Micro-fiction places in contest!

I submitted a micro-fiction (a story under 100 words) to Residential Aliens, a new speculative fiction magazine that recently started up, for a contest they were holding. According to my sources, I received an honorable mention. The issue is to come out October 1st. Here's the promo:

RESIDENTIAL ALIENS features award-winning R. L. Copple's story



The zine Residential Aliens is set to publish R. L. Copple's micro-fiction piece, Mirror, Mirror on the Screen, in their October 1st Issue. R. L. Copple was a finalist in RA's recent 100 word or less flash fiction contest.



Residential Aliens, edited by Lyn Perry, is an online magazine devoted to quality speculative fiction with a spiritual foundation. Watch for R. L. Copple's story at http://residentialaliens.blogspot.com/




R. L. Copple is the author of several poems and stories published by Dragon's, Knights, and Angels, The Sword Review, Haruah, Ray Gun Revival, EveryDay Fiction, and A Thousand Faces including Monkey Madness which places second in the Ray Gun Revival flash fiction contest. You can read more about R. L. Copple at http://www.rlcopple.com.

 Copple's Creations

"Steamy Realities" kicks off new series!

"Steamy Realities" was originally published at The Sword Review in Dec. 2006, last year. Since then, I've developed a whole four chapter series based on this story which, if you've read this blog before, have all been accepted to run at The Sword Review.

The reprint of this story kicks off the new series, which will run through December, and I will soon have a book of novella length selling on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and can be ordered at your local bookstore titled Infinite Realities.

If you missed reading it the first time, or want to enjoy it again, here's your excuse. More news to come soon.

Copple's Creations Blog

Contest poem doesn't place, but will be published.

I submitted a poem to Dragon, Knights, and Angels' annual poetry contest again this year. Readers may recall last year one of my poems won an honorable mention, which is more than I could expect as there are several great poets that submit there. Again, they had a lot of entries, around fourty I'm told. But this time, I didn't place in the contest.

However, they did send me a contract to publish the poem anyway. So, while not an "award winning" poem in this case, it will see the light of day.

It is a little more than interesting that all of my speculative poetry has been published by DKA. For some reason, the pieces I've sent them work, while one's I've submitted elsewhere don't. But this makes the fourth poem of mine they will publish. Hum, maybe I just need to pretend to write a poem for DKA, but then submit it elsewhere. Who knows, just might work.

My old comics

I had these on my previous blog, and am just now getting back to putting them up again.

My brother and I, back as pre-teens, started writing comics, making stories, and having fun. You can say that this was my first story creation medium. First, we started with using our stuffed toys to create comics, but later we developed a whole list of human superheros and villians. I even had a comic that was a take-off of Speed Racer that was my favorite.

One time, my brother and I decided to send off our characters to Marvel, in the vain hope that they would think, "Oh, these are great. Let's use them and send these kids a lot of money for 'em!" Yea, right. What can I say, we were young, naive teens. But I do wonder, because one of my characters was "Magnet Man." He looked a lot like Iron Man but use Earth's gravity fields to fly and take out the bad guys. I'll have to research this, but I wondered when I saw "Magnito" on the X-Men, whether or not my character spawned that idea or not. Hum...

Anyway, most of those old comics I no longer have. Which is a shame because it would be real interesting to re-read some of them now in retrospect. But, I do have three, fortunately. They are all from our stuffed toy collection, and they all feature my favorite stuffed toy, a teddy bear named "Charlie." These comics are in PDF format, and you can download them freely. They've never been published anywhere except at this blog and website. Hope you enjoy them.

This first comic is from my earliest series, that I called "Detective Charlie." Usually the story went that he received his orders from the boss, the device always blows up, he goes after the bad guys but mostly he seems to "win" by sheer luck, and no matter what situation he is in, he just happens to be carrying with him what he needs! It was intentionally a spoofy series on James Bond type things. I never got around to coloring this one, so all black and white. This one is under 500KB in size.

Detective Charlie: Death Trap

The second one is one of my favorite series, which I called "Neptune 2." "Hum," you say. "That sounds familiar, this wouldn't be a take off of Lost in Space, now would it?" Well, yea, you could call it that. There is a similar shape to the ships and they usually crash land. Only thing missing is the robot. But you can say these are my first attempts at space opera, though I had no idea what that was then, I just liked space stories. This is mostly colored, and so the file is on the bigger side, just over 6.5 Megs.

Neptune 2: It's a Long Ways Down

The last one is one of my superhero comics. Sort of a League of superheros type story. Detective Charlie heads up this organization, with Sound Rabbit, Silver Mouse and Bear. This one was partially colored so the file is a little big, but not as big as the last one, at 2.6 megs.

The Superhero Outfit: The Final Test

Hope you enjoy them. I just might get back into writing more someday. Once I get the rust out of my drawing skills.

Copple's Creations

"Monkey Madness" wins second place in flash fiction contest!

Yep, that's right. Second place! Do I hear a wOOt! Cool. The story is in Ray Gun Revival's recently posted issue, #29. Open that pdf up and click on the next to the last contest entry to place and you'll find it.

This was a challenge in that the story had to be 500 words or less. The shortest story I've written yet. Well, honestly I've recently submitted to a micro-flash fiction contest (I'll let you know how that turns out) that is under 100 words, but this is the shortest published to date. So it is a quick read. And the other interesting winners are there too, along with some good stories and the start of what looks to be a good serial. So check it out.

We'll have several notices coming out this month. I know of at least three other stories coming out this month, and my book should be available by the end of this month. So, check back!

Copple's Creations