Sunday 9 July 2017

Red Email Day

Doesn't sound half as good as 'red letter day', does it?  And I thought the world was subject to the doctrine of marginal gains...  oh, hold on, it's Tour de France time again, I must be getting confused.

Buses.  There's another cliche.  All coming along at once.  Try this for size:

Yesterday - and I've kept my powder dry on this one, because I know how fickle you all are, and if I told you before you could lay your sticky mitts on it you'd just go back to YouTube or something - NewCon Press released their Best of British Science Fiction 2016 anthology.

And whose name do you see leading the pack?  Yes, mine.  Not Peter F Hamilton or Ian Whates, mine.  (Okay, so it's an exhaustive webpage list in alphabetical order, and I'm relegated on the cover to the 'and more...' category, but still...)  It's my story Shooting the Messenger, which orginally appeared in Geminid Press' Night Lights anthology.

I know you want to rush out and buy it.  Well, don't bother.  Stay in and click here instead.  Much quicker.

Buses.  Where do the buses come in?  Well, yesterday also, just before the postman handed me my copy of the NewCon anthology (as an item of mail, not in some bizarre prize-giving ceremony) I received an email form Joni Labaqui at the Writers of the Future Contest, and that afternoon, a call from her, to tell me I'm a finalist, shortlisted, last eight out of thousands.

The enormity of this is still sinking in.  I'm not sure the gravity of the first has fully registered.

Maybe nothing'll come of it; maybe I'll find myself in LA dressed as a penguin because of it, who knows?  But days like yesterday balance out the hundreds that bring rejection emails.

The moral?  Keep banging your head against the wall, because you never know how close to breaking out of the madhouse you are.  And, who knows, there may not be void and vacuum on the other side...

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