A Rad Story, A Rad Blog, and a Read Radding.

Hello there, everyone!
Yes that is right I have started a blog. Don't look too surprised; most people do at some point. It's one of the inevitabilities of our perplexing modern age or something. On the upside, however, my blog has a very direct name, so it will be very easy to look in your bookmarks and know exactly what this blog is. I make no apologies for how blatantly 90s it is.

And, I'd like to start off with some very good news! My short story, "The Road of Good Intentions" appeared in the latest addition to the Tesseracts series of anthologies! I seriously couldn't be more excited about this. First of all, the first Tesseracts anthology was published before I was even born. Second, such absolute legends of Canadian speculative fiction as William Gibson and Margaret Atwood have been printed in the series. When I think about the history of it all, I feel melodramatically faint!

So here's the story about it. I was at a book launch chatting with Brian Hades, and he made me promise to send a short story in to Tesseracts 15. He made me promise! Brian's a hard guy to say no to, you know. So, I promised.

And then I found out that my On Spec coworker Susan MacGregor was one of the editors. And, well, I was terrified. Because Susan's a pro down to the ground, so I knew there was no way I was getting kid gloves from her. She's very definite about she wants, and since I'd just started working with On Spec and didn't know everyone as well as I do now, that was terrifying to me! (Even now, I've got a much looser, more touchy-feely hippy style of editing than hers. I'm kind of a baby.)

But, I had promised Brian. So, I finished editing this story I'd whipped up based on a character I'd been using in some other stuff. I guess I had just felt like describing the place, and when I re-read the story I realized that it had some okay things going for it. Then my dear friend Robin Carson (Another On Spec coworker, who taught me a lot about editing) had a look at the story, pointed out the (many) places in which it made no sense, and helped me shine it up for Tesseracts.

And then I sent it in. By the time I sent it in, I wasn't as scared as I was before, partially because I'd got to know Susan better, but I was still nervous because I'm kind of an enormous pessimist, and none of my fiction submissions had come to anything before. I was so shocked to hear that it had been accepted! Susan said that the most important thing about YA is never to talk down to your reader, which was a big part of why she'd accepted my (only technically safe for young adults) story.

Here! I recorded a reading just for you!


Upload MP3s using free MP3 hosting from Tindeck.


So, here we are! I suppose I've got no choice but to keep working. I've got novels to edit, after all; just because I've published a short story doesn't mean I'm not a novelist at heart! I finished National Novel Writing Month yesterday, so instead of loafing about for the rest of the month I've decided to take my query letters more seriously. I'm also going to go through my fiction and probably run a web serial.
COMMENCE THE BLOGGING.

For more about Tesseracts, check out the Totally Tesseracts blog and Edge Publishing's website!