Blotter Paper

Since I last updated, I’ve flown from D.C. to Frankfort to Dubai to Islamabad to Lahore to Karachi back to Islamabad back to Karachi to Dhaka and am currently in Kolkata. Tomorrow I am flying to Manila via Bangkok. That’s my last real stop! I should be home in almost exactly one week.

My blog posting schedule will resume, maybe, someday, when I have time. I keep bubbling up with ideas for posts and then sinking back into my perfume-scented cushions and thinking, “Man, I don’t have time to write 2,000 words about how much I love my Kindle and how it’s better in every way than paper books”.

2009 was the first year since I began writing and submitting that I did not sell a story. That doesn’t really mean anything, per se, since most of the venues I sold to previously were read by, maybe, five people, and the lack of sales was largely due to cutting that sort of publication out of my submissions queue. But still, it can be mildly disheartening to have to measure my writing progres solely in terms of rejection slips (192) and words (189,550)  since my last sale.

So I was fairly happy to recieve word, today, that Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet has accepted my story “The Other Realms Were Built With Trash”. This “zine” (another of those terms I can’t use seriously) is edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant and has a fairly good critical reputation. I am not at all unhappy about this. Gavin Grant said it would probably appear late in this year, but given their publication schedule, I can’t really say for sure.

If any of my clarion classmates are reading this post, the story was the one I wrote during my fifth week of Clarion (more than 3.5 years ago!).