Thank you so much for your kind words! I feel a bit overwhelmed! :)

I think this story is probably the best of the ones I wrote in the last couple of weeks. I enjoyed working on it a lot.

I agree with your points about my work being a bit too long for Hive to find general readers unfortunately. People are more used to short bursts than long 3.000+ words stories on the internet. It's a bit regrettable, but it is what it is.

As for publishing, it's really tough to be honest. I've been thinking about an anthology for a while, but I still feel I need a few more stories that truly shine. I think most of my work is average at best, apart from a few who are truly good. I'm also a bit wary about self-publishing, since I'd rather not throw out something that's subpar and editing also costs a ton of money. So that's a bit of a problem.

A good point are magazine submissions though that you touched on. There are a few places out there that are interesting and even a few horror themed magazines. So I might try my luck with them and see what happens.

Again thank you very much!