Afterburn SF has just accepted my story, "Three Perspectives on the Role of the Anarchists in the Zombie Apocalypse" for their next issue.

I wrote a one flash and one other just-over-flash-length thing after it, but this was the last full-length story I wrote before Clarion last summer. I was terribly attached to it--zombies! molotov cocktails! mind-bending drugs! thinly-disguised propaganda!--but I figured between the length and politics, it was probably unpublishable.

This is really, really good news on many fronts. It's been about a year since the last sale I made anywhere. (I had the contest win, and it's a comfortable t-shirt and a couple of the books look good, but that's *not* the same thing.) This is also my first post-Clarion sale, and, as much as I loved Clarion (if they let you go back, I would), the year after getting what can be on some level an intensive crash course in recognizing more keenly the flaws in your writing is *not* a fun time for an extended dry spell of not publishing anything.

Also, if I unerstand the rules correctly, this story should qualify me for Affiliate Membership in the Horror Writers Association (the organization formerly known as "Horror Writers of America"), since it's being published in Afterburn SF's horror section (although, really, it could just as easily be put in the science fiction section, since it has futuristic political extrapolation and, in the Romero tradition, the zombies aren't a result of anything supernatural) and, given Afterburn's recent pay hike, it's the first story I've sold for more than the $25 HWA requires for qualifying sales for Associate Membership. For Active Membership, they require three sales at 5-cents-a-word markets, just like SWFA does, but for Associate Memberships they just require one sale for $25 or more. (My Walking Bones story was arguably horror, but I only got paid $20 for that one.)

In any case, I am a very, very happy camper right now. I really needed this.