For those wondering, YES, the usual interviews will be resuming soon. I’ve got one in queue waiting on me to send some follow-up questions, and I sent another 2 sets of questions out today. They’re coming, promise!
But first, some personal news I need to share:
So as usual for a Wednesday, #sffwrtcht started at 9pm tonight on Twitter. #sffwrtcht is a weekly thing, with a rotating series of science fiction, fantasy and horror authors as guests. This week’s guest was my friend Damien Walters Grintalis, whose novel INK, about a tattoo job gone wrong in a horrific way, just came out. Damien tuckerized me into her story “Scarred” for Fireside magazine last year, too. A few minutes into the chat stream, moderator and friend Bryan Thomas Schmidt shoots me a private message on Facebook. “Damien and I both have big announcements to make at the end of chat, so stick around.” Because he knows I sometimes get distracted by 19 other things going on and forget to check back to the chat. I figured he was going to announce he’d pitched another anthology idea, or something like that.
Near the end of chat, he slips this in: “I’d like to announce that #sffwrtcht regulars @talekyn & @jaleta_clegg have sold stories to #BeyondTheSun anthology.”
Well, THAT took me by surprise.
I knew Bryan liked my story “Chasing Satellites” enough to ask me to do a rewrite and hone it before the final submission deadline rather than reject it outright. But I honestly thought, with the deadline just passed, that it would be a week or so before he made any final decisions.
This is my first semi-pro sale, at the four-cents-a-word rate Bryan quoted when he funded the book through Kickstarter in the fall. Bryan gave me my first book anthology unpaid sale in 2012, with “A Battle For Parantwer” in SPACE BATTLES. Before “Chasing Satellites,” every story I’ve published has been recompensed with copies of the book or magazine. A semi-pro sale apparently isn’t enough to earn me credits towards membership in the Science Fiction Writers Association, but it is a large step in the right direction, and of course a HUGE boost to my writer’s ego.
A number of you reading this donated to Brian’s Kickstarter for BEYOND THE SUN because you knew if the project was funded and IF my story was accepted (and there was never any guarantee it would be), it would mean a lot to me on a personal level. I explained why in this post. And so now that my story has been accepted … I cannot thank those of you who backed the project enough. If the project hadn’t funded, all of this would be moot.
BEYOND THE SUN will be out from Fairwood Press in mid-July 2013. I’ll be appearing beside my hero Robert Silverberg, as well as greats like Mike Resnick, Nancy Kress, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Jennifer Brozek, Jason Sanford, Autumn Rachel Dryden, and my friends Jaleta Clegg and Maurice Broaddus, in a book edited by my friend and mentor Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I’m honored to be alongside all of them…
…. but dude, I’m gonna be in a book with ROBERT FREAKIN’ SILVERBERG.
Oh, and I owe a shout-out to singer-songwriter Thomas Fiss, as well. I promised him I’d write a short story based on the title track of his latest EP, and this is it! Thanks for the inspiration, Thomas!