October 13, 2016

My poem “The Scientist’s Paramour” is out in the new October/November double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. The editors have billed this as their “slightly spooky” issue. Ironically, my poem is one of the least spooky things I’ve written in a while! I’m starting to suspect that everything I write is at least a little bit disturbing, even if I’m actively trying to write something completely mainstream. Ah well.

This is my first appearance in Asimov’s (hopefully not my last!) and I’m very excited to be in the magazine. It’s been one of the top science fiction publications for decades and I’ve really admired the work of the writers who regularly appear in it. 

Even if you’ve been working as a fiction writer for a while, sometimes there’s a day when you check the mail and find your contributor's copies of a magazine you’ve long dreamed of seeing your work in, and it’s utterly magical. Holding copies of this issue of Asimov’s was definitely that moment for me.

I had wanted to be in the magazine since I was a teenager, although (also ironically) I hadn't actually tried until recently. I did submit in my mid-20s, before I went to Clarion and realized how much work my short fiction needed to make it of sufficent quality to get published in a top magazine. And then, when I started making regular sales, Asimov's only took snail-mail submissions and I was having good luck with magazines that took emailed submissions. It just didn't seem worth the postage to wait and be rejected when I could get rejected for free! At some point a few years ago, Asimov's joined the rest of the publishing world and started accepting esubs, but I was busy with other projects.

I guess the moral of this particular story is: if you want something, you gotta make time for it and try to get it, or it ain't gonna ever happen.

LEVEL 12!!!!

As I write this, I'm about to finally hit Level 12 here! That may not seem like a huge milestone for those Level 30, or Level 40. But it's huge, huge to me. 13 years in the making. I will be able to buy C!s... not that many but some... and that will be very nice. From now on when I really want to C! something, I will be able to even if I've already used my daily C! allotment.

I'd like to mark this special occasion to give a shoutout to those who've been there for me over the past year as I went through so much that I ended up having a mental breakdown in January. Having to deal with me during the month prior, and the month of that could not have been easy, not easy at all. I really needed them and they were there for me, dealing with truly 'insane' extremely long messages very frequently as I grew deeper in despair living in fear of a mental breakdown that had already happened and I just didn't know it yet.

Looking back after I recognized just when it had happened, the day I said to anyone who would listen "My spirit has been broken" - that was it, when I lost my grip on sanity. I went deeper and deeper into hiding... doing increasingly 'insane' things and justifying them all no matter how bizarre they seemed because I was trying to prevent a 'last straw' from causing a mental breakdown. One that had already happened.

I am doing so much better these days, amazingly so. The resulting PTSD I have from the events happening at that time, is getting so much better. Much better than I could have ever hoped for.

Thanks to all those who were there for me then, and in the months after when I was dealing with extreme mental pain, depression, and so on.

Shoutout to david

Shoutout to river

Shoutout tc

Shoutout to Hockey

Shoutout to Ss

Shoutout to karp

Thanks to everyone else who was there for me to one degree or another during my time of need - I hope you all have amazing futures - and I am sure you will :)

I'm very glad to be back on E2. Thanks to everyone here who has voted on my WUs and given me C!'s in this journey to Level 12! I plan to do a few exciting, and useful things here in the future! :)