Writing updates
Escape Velocity: the anthology is nearing completion. We've had the stories, poem, cartoon and editorials done and proofread for a while but two things held things up. 1) a few admin / finance issues but they're sorted now. 2) the extraordinary success of Into The Blast – the story of DB Cooper, the skyjacker in the 1970s, who was never caught. WordPress won't let me put a direct link to the Amazon (the dot com as only the first edition is on the UK version at the moment) selling for print or ebook.If you go to Amazon yourself and find Into the Blast revised edition you'll a very low star rating by one person. Apparently, he is upset that our research came to a different conclusion to him, he's brought out his own book and probably jealous of ours being the subject of a History Channel decoders programme. Healthy competition is fine in the publishing industry, though in the main I've only seen cooperation and friendship. Mean to diss your competition by putting low ratings for their products. Anyway, perhaps that reviewer will like our anthology, and it is due out in March.
I received a lovely rejection letter via my US agent this week. We didn't realise that the science fiction branch of New Deer Press was headed up by none other than Robert J Sawyer. My agent had sent them a query letter for my Left Luggage science fiction trilogy a long time ago and hadn't chased them. So she received this from the great man: "Please accept my profound apologies for being so long in replying — 13 months is unconscionable!. I don't work in the Red Deer Press offices, and they only just forwarded your query to me. Your project is fascinating, but, alas, my little line of books only publishes Canadian authors, sad to say. I do wish you the very best of luck elsewhere.
Rob Sawyer"
Wow, that's a rejection I didn't mind. Of course it seems odd for that publisher to only want Canadian writers and there's nothing on their submission guidelines to say so. Perhaps they receive a grant from their government. Anyhow, I mentioned this to some friends. One is Canadian and offered to help. We briefly discussed me marrying her, but that is problematical with both of us being already married. She is the charming Isabelle Prevost. Like me she won an award at Wuacademia. Her's is for a collection of short stories called L'Objectif – in French as you see. Here at Wuacemia. My Hot Air is there too.
A flash short story of mine is in a charity anthology, The Write to Fight. Supporting young olympic hopefuls it is available here. The story is written from the point of view of a sparrow. It is rare for me to write from an animal viewpoint but it was a way to imbue a lot of irony into how humans live.
I heard that another short story, The Examination, has been picked for the Queensland 100 anthology. All proceeds are going to victims of the floods in Australia this winter. No link yet.
