Another Contract Signed — ‘Tis the Season?

Cowabunga! No more than a few hours after I’d sent back the DAILY SCIENCE FICTION contract for “The Seven” (see post just below), what should appear but another contract? Is September official “Contract Catch-Up” month?

This one comes from Juli Rew of Third Flatiron Publishing for THINGS WITH FEATHERS: STORIES OF HOPE and my story, “The Wise Sister” (cf. August 31). Hi, James– I am attaching a PDF document, which is your contract with Third Flatiron. Could you please print it out, sign it, and mail it back ASAP. . . . An address was given plus several alternatives to mailing, including scanning and emailing that back. The public library, reopened, had not that long ago installed a scanner (I’d already used it once, in fact, to make a PDF copy of my COVID vaccination card). Hmmmm.

So less than two hours ago as of this writing, on Tuesday the 7th, I printed that sucker at the library (on their “good” machine — no Computer Cave primitivism this time), signed it, scanned it, attached the new PDF and sent it back. So that’s two (count ’em, 2) contracts returned on back to back days, the last for a metafiction on fairy tales, this one for a fable in its own right. “The Wise Sister,” by me and not Aesop as a reading of it can attest (no animals, for one thing, except for a few sea birds at the end), on the qualities defining true wisdom, and if things go on schedule expected to be out about mid-October.