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Into Stone
About two years ago, Paul Guyot pulled a short-story contest out of his ass and a bunch of people entered it.
(And before you write me about that sentence, you should know I already sent it to Guyot, in an email with the subject line "The nonspecificity of 'it'.")
The only rule was that the story had to include an armored car and a piece of children's clothing. A year into twin-fatherhood, whacked out on sleep deprivation, watching my previous publications recede, and steadily increasing my alcohol intake (that stuff really works as a numbing agent), I lunged after the questionable motivation of wanting to impress Paul and somehow wrote a draft.
When the contest deadline came, the draft wasn't good enough to put my name on, so I didn't send it to him. It sat. I tinkered. I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN got shot, edited, and submitted to film festivals. Mac and Butch turned two. DEAD GRAY came out in Ellery Queen's.
I sent ARMORED a couple of places. They sent it back with praise for the writing and didn't seem to get the main thing I was trying to do. (If novels are operas, short stories can be any of several things, but this one's an etude.) I worked some more on the thing they weren't getting and bounced it off readers until one of them got it.
Somewhere in there, Bryon Quertermous commented on a blog entry about a werewolf at Starbucks and invited me to submit stories to DEMOLITION. So I did. He had a few notes. They made sense, so I took another pass at it and changed the title.
Short-story magazines don't afford you an acknowledgments page like books do, so: Thanks to Ava Larkin, SJ Rozan, Paul Guyot, Laura Bradford, Kathleen, Lori, D. P. Lyle, and if you helped me and your name's not here, cut me some memory-damaged twin-daddy slack and let me know to add it.
Mac and Butch have turned three. INTO STONE is now up in The Winter '08 issue of DEMOLITION.
And a reminder
If you're in Syracuse, don't forget--that screening at Funk-N-Waffles is tonight!
(And before you write me about that sentence, you should know I already sent it to Guyot, in an email with the subject line "The nonspecificity of 'it'.")
The only rule was that the story had to include an armored car and a piece of children's clothing. A year into twin-fatherhood, whacked out on sleep deprivation, watching my previous publications recede, and steadily increasing my alcohol intake (that stuff really works as a numbing agent), I lunged after the questionable motivation of wanting to impress Paul and somehow wrote a draft.
When the contest deadline came, the draft wasn't good enough to put my name on, so I didn't send it to him. It sat. I tinkered. I LOVE YOU, I'M SORRY, AND I'LL NEVER DO IT AGAIN got shot, edited, and submitted to film festivals. Mac and Butch turned two. DEAD GRAY came out in Ellery Queen's.
I sent ARMORED a couple of places. They sent it back with praise for the writing and didn't seem to get the main thing I was trying to do. (If novels are operas, short stories can be any of several things, but this one's an etude.) I worked some more on the thing they weren't getting and bounced it off readers until one of them got it.
Somewhere in there, Bryon Quertermous commented on a blog entry about a werewolf at Starbucks and invited me to submit stories to DEMOLITION. So I did. He had a few notes. They made sense, so I took another pass at it and changed the title.
Short-story magazines don't afford you an acknowledgments page like books do, so: Thanks to Ava Larkin, SJ Rozan, Paul Guyot, Laura Bradford, Kathleen, Lori, D. P. Lyle, and if you helped me and your name's not here, cut me some memory-damaged twin-daddy slack and let me know to add it.
Mac and Butch have turned three. INTO STONE is now up in The Winter '08 issue of DEMOLITION.
And a reminder
If you're in Syracuse, don't forget--that screening at Funk-N-Waffles is tonight!
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