I’ve often wondered how musicians—and the others involved in making these choices—don’t know when they have a hit single on their hands. In retrospect, it seems self-evident. When I hear stories about situations where a song almost wasn’t released as a single at all and went on to become one of the biggest hits of all time (Crocodile Rock, for example), I shake my head and say: how couldn’t they have known how great the song was at the time?
But then I look at my own work and realize, when you are really close to something and when you are producing a respectable amount of material, how difficult it is to pick out in advance the ones that will strike a chord with readers. I have three stories from among the forty-some that have been published to date that absolutely seemed to have hit the strike zone. Stories that people bring up in conversations or that they write to me about. At the time I wrote them I probably thought they were pretty good, else I wouldn’t have submitted them. But I have other stories that I felt more strongly about at the time, a few of which aren’t even published yet (not for lack of trying).
Whispers of Wickedness has a nice review of Apex Digest #9 in which the reviewer cites my story, Sufficiently Advanced, as “the best story of the bunch.” (Click the link to read the rest of the review). In a magazine that features tales by William F. Nolan and Kevin J. Anderson, that’s not faint praise, so I definitely had an inflated head for a while yesterday when I first read it (which lasted until I received a rejection letter a short while later).
Joe Kroeger has a really nice review of A Dark and Deadly Valley at Horror World. He doesn’t mention my story specifically, but he raves over the anthology as a whole. He closes, “All in all, I was extremely grateful to have walked through the haunting and emotional visions of these twenty authors, and I would give my highest recommendations to anyone looking for a truly great horror anthology. A Dark And Deadly Valley, edited by Mike Heffernan, is one of the best examples of the great fiction that the horror genre has to offer.”
I wrote 1400 words on the new short story this morning. I’ve got to wrap it up fairly soon on two counts—the word count is getting up there (over 5200) and the deadline is getting close.
I was pleased by the outcome of The Amazing Race, which I watched last night. One more episode to go, a two-hour finale next week. Sad to see Danny and Oswald go, and not encouraged by an apparent meltdown between Dustin and Kandace next week, but it should be a good finale. There’s no real love lost among any of the remaining teams, so it could get nasty.
Last night’s 24 was okay, but I think I’ve been cured of the show in general and probably won’t be a return viewer if there’s another season.
