Two months ago, I made a sale. It’s finally time to let the cat—or rather, the giant mecha—out of the bag.
My story “Final Flight of the PhoenixWing” will appear in The Razor’s Edge, a military SF/F anthology from Zombies Need Brains, edited by Troy Bucher and Joshua Palmatier. The anthology will explore rebellion, insurgency, and the line between a liberator and an extremist. You can pre-order it as an ebook or a limited edition mass market paperback. It will also have a trade paperback edition upon release (Estimated release date: August 2018).
Now, a little more about my story. It has two origins: a writing prompt from nine months ago, and an old idea from… more than nine years ago.
Last summer, my writing group held a social gathering. Dinner at a restaurant, bring a piece of writing. The organizer gave us a writing prompt: use these four words in a one-page piece of writing.
Strangely, writing prompts rarely inspire brand new ideas out of me. Instead, they often incite me to dust off old ideas I’d wanted to write since forever. In this case, it was a giant mecha story I first conceived of as a teenager. (Must’ve been all that Gundam Wing I watched.)
As usual, I overshot the word limit and wrote two pages instead of one. The restaurant we selected turned out to be noisy and not exactly well-lit—hardly an ideal setting for reading a far-future science fiction story crammed onto single-spaced pages (printed at the public library, so I skimped on printing fees). I had to shout to be heard, and my writing group was probably just confused. But I had the beginnings of a story.
Fast forward a few months. Zombies Need Brains had three new anthologies in the works. I knew I had to submit something. Second Round intrigued me, but I didn’t know if I could write for it (See my comment about writing prompts. I usually find ideas that suit submission calls, rather than use submission calls to come up with ideas). I had several ideas that might fit the tone of Guilds & Glaives, but they weren’t about guilds per se. I could tweak them, of course.
Then there was The Razor’s Edge. Insurgency, rebellion, military SF/F. I opened old Word documents. Exhibit A: A novelette about rebellion and betrayal … but too long, and in very rough shape. Exhibit B: More military focused, more likely to land within word limit… but half-finished, and written years ago. I could barely remember what I’d intended to write.
Then I looked at the two pages I wrote for that writing group social. They were recently written, and required less clean-up than Exhibits A and B. I still needed to write the other half of the story, but that was easier than tackling those older stories. Between school, work, and other deadlines, I had to pick my battles.
I scribbled. I edited. I scrapped two of those “writing prompt words,” though I kept the other two. I sent my story at the last moment and thought I’d probably flown too close to the sun/insert-your-star-of-choice. I breathed a sigh of relief when I received the acknowledgement email. I was grateful that the story will be considered. I didn’t think for one second that it would be accepted.
When I received the acceptance email on January 29th, I leapt out of my chair and went dancing in the hallway. It’s not technically my first sale, but emotionally it felt like it. I’d sold a story a few months before, but the magazine went on hiatus without publishing my story. I also had a unique tentative acceptance situation going on elsewhere, but because of the uniqueness of the situation, my brain couldn’t quite remember how to shift into celebration mode. That email from Joshua and Troy made everything concrete, true. I’d made a sale. I’d made a sale to a professional market whose headliners have included people like David Farland and Seanan McGuire. Sometimes, refusing to self-reject does pay off.
I hope you will check out The Razor’s Edge when it comes out. And my story, “Final Flight of the PhoenixWing.” For extra authenticity, you may or may not wish to read it in a noisy restaurant.