Many sources of great lit and a question about horror

Lots to read, as ever! There's a new blog post up on the Short Review blog as part of Dzanc Books' 2009 Best of the Web anthology launch that I highly recommend you pop over and read. It's a guest post by M. Thomas Gammarino, one of the authors picked for BoTW, talking about his story, The Fridge. It's here.

Another source of lit: the latest copy of Irish lit mag The Stinging Fly landed in my postbox this week, and it looks great, with short stories by Aileen Armstrong, Jon Boilard, Philip Cummings, Catherine Finn, Alison MacLeod and Heather Richardson, poetry from Arlene Ang, Carolyn Jess-Cooke and others, and a fabulous article by Colm Liddy called "My Struggle ... to Grow Up and Be a Writer", which talks about how getting his first book deal affected him. I haven't read much of this Summer issue yet, am saving it!

And me-centred news: two flash stories have been accepted by the London magazine for their August issue, which I think will be science-themed, something that always thrills me. Lovely way to welcome me to England when we move at the end of August (although not to London, but who's quibbling?!)

Right now I am working on a new short story that I wrote the other day with the Manchester Fiction prize in mind. I was pretty surprised when 1600 words came out all in one go. Now I have to tweak and polish, haven't read it since, am a bit nervous in case I hate it. Always a risk! And inspired by the Waterford Film Festival competition for a short screenplay, I am adapting one of my published stories into a film (something my mother's been telling me to do for ages, okay, fine, I'm doing it), which is such fun: the story is there, but I have to think hard about how it can be told visually, with images instead of all those words. Loving it.

A question for all my dear blog readers: I am, as I mentioned a while back, attempting to only submit fiction to paying markets. I keep a close eye on Duotrope's What's New page and notice that the markets that pay, and often pay a lot, are the ones with titles like "End of Days: An Apocalyptic Anthology", "Fight On! Weird Enclaves and Black Pits", "Dark Moon Anthology: Zombie Short Stories", "Middle of Nowhere: Horror in Rural America", and "Zombology VI: The Undead Versus the Living Dead" - and that's just this week!

What does it say about the state of fiction markets that the horror markets pay their writers seemingly so well, but the literary markets, on the whole, don't?? Why not? Most importantly, what does this say about readers and what they are willing to pay for. Answers please.