“Pandora’s Tackle Box”

Let’s start the new year (arbitrary transition that it is) right.

My story “Pandora’s Tackle Box” has been accepted for the Harnessing Fire anthology. The collection is subtitled A Hephaestus Devotional. Hephaestus was the blacksmith to the Greek Pantheon and, among other things, he is said to have created Pandora to bedevil poor Epimetheus. My story is a modern retelling of that myth, centered in the Missouri Ozarks and dealing with a fishing tournament, thus the tackle box. My character’s name is Old Festus, and he is a blacksmith, as it happens.

The Harnessing Fire anthology will be a print publication, due to come out this spring. I’m eager to see it since it appears to be focused on literary and scholarly writing. I feel classed up a bit.

Long time readers (or those who have delved into the sidebar of this humble blog) will recall that “Pandora’s Tackle Box” has already seen publication. It first appeared in A Golden Place in the Spring 2011 issue. Now a new set of readers will have a look at it.

Simple pleasures.

“Pandora’s Tackle Box”

A bit of good news started off my weekend. On Friday evening I heard from the editor of A Golden Place telling me that my short story “Pandora’s Tackle Box” has been accepted for publication there. I first made cryptic mention of it in this post.

As I said then, I made some of the changes she suggested, but not all of them. In her response, the editor didn’t make mention of me not changing the ending, but she did say there were some typos in the punctuation that would be fixed. Not sure what those might be, though they may have been intentional since you know how little regard I have for “the rules.”

Once the issue is online — the first week of March — I’ll put a link up over in the sidebar.