In an ordinary world, I would be in an airplane headed to New England for Necon 40. But it’s far from an ordinary world and I’m not going anywhere farther than the mailbox to pick up the post today. By my reckoning, I’ve been in lockdown for 121 days. I’ve been to the post office several times (twice during opening hours when I had to interact with a human being), that’s pretty much it.
I do regret not being at Necon–it’s a heckuva lotta fun. However, given the current circumstances, I don’t want to be around anyone other than my wife. We’ve been waving at our neighbors on occasion, but haven’t really spoken to them. Social distancing to the max.
When I lived in Howe Hall, the men’s residence at Dalhousie University, I went through a phase of short story writing. I had a few hardcover journals with the university crest on the front, and I filled them with handwritten tales. I never did anything with them beyond reading them to a few friends. About 15 years ago, I got my hands on those journals from the attic at my family home and transcribed them into Word. At least one–maybe two–of them were published subsequently. A number of them will never see the light of day.
When I was looking at submission guidelines recently, I saw a call for a Halloween-themed anthology. I started looking through my digital files and discovered a 1983 story that looked like a good fit. On my first editing pass, I trimmed about 100 extraneous words (out of 2300) and tidied up some awkward wording. Then I went through it four or five times, deleting, adding, shifting, rewording, expanding, contracting. I ended up with a 2700-word story that is essentially the same as the original version, but much more in line with my current style. I found it interesting that none of my edits had to do with the fact that the story was originally written 37 years ago. Nothing about it was tied to that era.
I submitted the story on Tuesday and it was accepted today. Hooray! I suppose there’s a moral here, about stories and timelessness and universality and being patient, but I’m just happy this little story from my early years as a writer has found a home.
The two-day response was gratifying, but it’s not the quickest I’ve had recently. I submitted my story “The Hound of Bracketville” at 10:30 one morning and had it accepted at 1:30 pm the same day! It will appear in the anthology Places We Fear to Tread in September.
Other recent publications: My Benjamin Kane story “Kane and the Candidate” is now available in eBook and paperback in the anthology Low Down Dirty Vote, Volume II, a charitable anthology benefiting the Southern Poverty Law Center. My story “Expiration Date” is now available in the anthology The Book of Extraordinary Impossible Crimes and Puzzling Deaths.
If you’re looking for a Stephen King news update, check out my latest post at News from the Dead Zone.
What have we watched lately? Hamilton on Disney+ and Greyhound on Apple TV+. We enjoyed them both. We’re into the final season of The Good Wife (pleasantly surprised to see Lucca Quinn show up! I’m watching I’ll Be Gone in the Dark each week on HBO. I binged through the five-episode BBC series Paradox last weekend and started the Finnish crime series Deadwind (Season 2) this week. I have some issues with the writing on the latter. Some of it is quite lazy and sloppy.
After finishing Season 3 of Dark (excellent show), I went back and did a quick rewatch of the first season. It makes so much more sense now that I have a firmer grasp on who everyone is and the different stages in their lives. An intricate show extremely well executed.
