Sunday 15 May 2022

After Abercrombie

Serendipitously, after recent posts outlining my somewhat laissez faire attitude towards simultaneous submissions, life comes along with an example of the scenario I may have to spin as reality when trying to gloss over my misdemeanours: a submission long-since given up as lost in the ether and subsequently pitched to other markets, that is accepted totally out of the blue.

The story is a sci-fi flash called 'After Abercrombie' and the venue in question is the Page & Spine Fiction Showcase.  In fact, the message wasn't just that it had been accepted, but that it would be published the next day, and $20 would be finding its way into my PayPal account (and has done so).

I'm doubly confused as this seems to be Page & Spine's death rattle, having rebranded themselves as the unpaid market P&S.  No contract came with the acceptance, writers' guidelines have been removed from the old site, and my email enquiry about terms, particularly exclusivity, has not been responded to.  So, I guess, there is no exclusivity.  Not sure what else to conclude.

Other than suggesting you take a look.

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Click on the images or search for these on Amazon.
You're here, so surely you know how to do that?


2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic. 




Tuesday 3 May 2022

You'd have thought they'd have emailed

I don't want to give you the impression that I occasionally Google my own name, but I occasionally Google my own name.  Not having an agent or a press-cutting service (did any of those outlast the Reagan administration? did they ever exist outside of pulp novels?) I would otherwise miss out on things like Austrian Spencer's review of The Dead Inside on Goodreads:

"Highlights for me were discovering Robert BagnallSarah Jackson Marcus Woodman, all of whom I’ll read more from this year."

I'd also miss out on finding a reference to myself on File 770 going back almost a year and a half (I said that I only Googled myself occasionally) reporting that my story 'The Thirteenth Floor', published in Third Flatiron's 2019 anthology 'Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses' (did I mention I have a story forthcoming in their next?) made the British Science Fiction Association Awards 2020 longlist in January 2021.

This, I admit, is news to me.  My understanding is that stories have to be nominated by somebody other than the author, so person or persons unknown and who I never paid in unmarked bills must have liked the yarn enough to nominate.  I'd only been a member for about three weeks at that point and was still working out how the whole BSFA thing worked, but they had all my details...  You'd have thought they'd have emailed or something, to let me know...

Meanwhile, back where people do give me a heads-up as to what's happening, here are two items for your virtual shopping basket.  Firstly, JayHenge's 'Grandpa's Deep-Space Diner' came out a couple of weeks ago with a reprint of my story 'The Fool' about an idiot with a fruit pudding.


Secondly, all credit to Patrick O'Ryan for getting the first issue of 'Medusa Tales' out of the door so quickly - my bad mermaid story 'Devil Ray at the Doorway' was taken less than four weeks ago.  Best of luck to both him and the magazine.


#
Click on the images or search for these on Amazon.
You're here, so surely you know how to do that?


2084 - The Meschera Bandwidth

2084. The world remains at war.

In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.

The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.

Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.

Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.

24 0s & a 2

Twenty-four slipstream stories.  Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.