“Calm” Contract Signed, Final Proof Sent Back

The magazine is NIGHTMARE ABBEY, companion to Tom English’s more science-fictional BLACK INFINITY, and the story “The Calm” (cf. July 27, et al.), originally published in 1999 in Marietta Publishing’s NEW MYTHOS LEGENDS. And with another BLACK INFINITY now as it were on the stands, the second NIGHTMARE ABBEY is readying for its debut.

So, the Writing Life, the things that must be done. Yesterday the contract came but, needing to be printed, signed, then faxed back to the computer for re-emailing, it waited for today for me to use local county library facilities. No problem there so, the technicalities taken care of, it went back to the “Abbey” this afternoon, to soon be replaced in my stack of new emails by an attachment of the final proof copy. The gears grind swiftly.

So, later this evening, I read through the copy, finding only one tiny correction (and even that rare for a publisher whose proofs are usually perfect) which, as I write this, has just been sent back. As for the story, by contrast to “Victorians” in NIGHTMARE ABBEY 1, a more or less 20th century-set tale of an older home providing the key to a long-repressed memory, “The Calm” takes place a good two centuries earlier, during the French and Indian War, and concerns an unmapped, mysterious village beset by an external menace.