The Cave Computer Strikes Again: Two-Day Acceptance, Contract For Call From Forest

This goes back to Tuesday, March 24, and an email from Michelle McLachlin from Eerie River Publishing:  Thank you so much for your patience.  We really enjoyed the story and I would like to officially notify you that it has been accepted into the anthology IT CALLS FROM THE FOREST:  VOLUME 2. Congratulations!  The story was titled “The Calm,” a reprint originally published in NEW MYTHOS LEGENDS (Marietta Publishing, 1999) and also in my 2001 collection, STRANGE MISTRESSES.  But then, the next sentence:  Attached you will find the contract, please review, complete all the highlighted sections including your name and story title, sign, and return this as soon as possible.  You will be getting a full page after your story for your bio, so please also email me an update[image error]d bio with any social media links you would like included.  No problem, of course, to provide a bio, but the label on the attachment said “DOCX.”  The Cave Computer, the “older” machine the coronavirus lockdown makes me use (the local library being closed) does not like DOCX.

This is not the first time the balky laptop has stood between me and a story contract, see, e.g., March 24 below where “Midnight Dark” and SHALLOW WATERS involved PDF translations (after an RTF attempt had resulted in an over bulky, multi-megabyte attachment) and ultimately photographing a printed out version signed extra darkly with a felt tip pen.  So here again a PDF switch allowed the contract to be read — which in turn uncovered two clauses that needed reworking — but was ultimately solved with a dodge as old as the laptop itself:  a TXT file.  Ugly, but workable.  And, happy ending, the printed-in signature added with other fill-the-blank items, the contract went back about mid afternoon, roughly two days after the initial acceptance.