Friday Feature ~ “Time Heals All”

“Time Heals All” was a story I had been shopping around for some time before it found a home at Temporal Element Anthology in April of 2013. According to the story’s record at Duotrope, I had submitted it 11 times before it was accepted. I don’t consider that a huge number, and I think its rejections had more to do with me sending it to unsuitable markets than any deficiency in the story itself. In any case, the print anthology Temporal Element snapped it up and then interviewed me a little later. The editor also paid me 15 cents for my story. He sent me a Buffalo nickel and a Liberty dime, which I thought was a pretty cool way to pay someone when you have a limited budget.

This story was strongly influenced by a story I’d read by Isaac Asimov, which had a similar shaggy dog-ish ending to what I used. Basically two workers in a science fictional universe (nurses in my story) go about their business and seem to move the plot forward, but it is only in the last sentence that the reader — and the one character who hadn’t read the brief on their job — learns what the real story is.

You can read the story here.

Friday Feature ~ “Moron Saturday”

I remember having a lot of fun writing “Moron Saturday.” It’s pretty much my retelling of the Diana and Actaeon myth, which had always intrigued me (and which is used in Iris Murdoch’s novel Henry and Cato). In my story, Actaeon is an English professor named Hunter who, through a series of mishaps, stumbles upon my Diana who is showering. He’s caught in the act, and the story closes with him being chased by a vicious dog. You take it from there.

I remember thinking at the time that I could probably retell a different myth each year and get the story published, (it turns out there are quite a few lit mags that have a classical mythology focus), and I did do that one more time, but I’ll get to that in a future Friday Feature. Long after this appeared in the now-archived online issue of Danse Macabre I tried getting the story accepted in a couple of anthologies, but I never heard back from them. (Danse Macabre did accept another of my stories later, but that will also be the subject of a future Friday Feature.)

I submitted “Moron Saturday” to Danse Macabre, for its upcoming Commedia issue, at the end of July in 2009 and received an acceptance at the beginning of September. I must have been getting used to acceptances after only one try and thinking it the norm. If so, I’ve long since grown more jaded.

As began with “The Lively Arts in Kansas City,” I was further developing my snarky narrative style with “Moron Saturday.” It’s a reliable tone I can take up with the right story, and sometimes I wonder if it is my true style.