“Icarus” revisited

This is going to sound a lot like last week’s post about my story “Hush Arbor.” Just as with that story, I had my story “Icarus” accepted, in this case at The Magnolia Review. But the extraordinary events of 2020 intervened, and not only was publication of “Icarus” delayed, but I feared that the journal itself had gone dark.

But then I received an email this morning from the editor apologizing for the delay and announcing that the issue with my story was in its final stages of production. Volume 6, issue 2 of The Magnolia Review will be coming out online very soon and possibly even in print.

This is the second story I’ve had published in The Magnolia Review. My story “Fire Sermon” appeared there several years ago and was even nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

When the issue goes live, I’ll post a link here.

“Icarus” has landed

XIR3675 Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, c.1555 (oil on canvas) by Bruegel, Pieter the Elder (c.1525-69); 73.5×112 cm; Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, Belgium; (add.info.: Icarus seen with his legs thrashing in the sea;); Giraudon; Flemish, out of copyright

Well, the mythical Icarus crash landed, but that does sort of happen in my story “Icarus.”

Anyway, I learned yesterday that “Icarus” has been accepted at Magnolia Review for an upcoming issue. I should know more after I sign the contract and return it.

Magnolia Review had published another story of mine, “Fire Sermon,” a little over two years ago. They even nominated it for a Pushcart Prize.

I thought “Icarus” was a pretty straightforward story, but I’ve been sending it out for more than a year, and it had received eleven rejections (three more pending, and this acceptance, so fifteen submissions in all). I sent it to Magnolia Review for its Defining Moment-themed issue, and there is certainly one of those in the story.

__________

The painting above was long thought to be by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, but modern scholarship has raised doubt about this. It was Iris Murdoch’s favorite depiction of the mythological event. That’s Icarus in the the lower right, already mostly in the water, while the others in the painting just go about their business.

pledged

So one of the lit mags that ran one of my stories, The Magnolia Review, which ran “Fire Sermon,” has a Kickstarter campaign and if they raise enuf money, they’re going to put out a print edition of the issue with my story in it. Through some quirk, I received an email about it, welcoming me to make a pledge.

While it is nice to see the shelf with the journals holding my stories getting more full, I don’t absolutely have to have a printed copy of each one. Still, I went to the site just to see what it was all about.

And what did I find but that they excerpted my story as a sample of what was in the issue.

As I write this, they have a long, long way to go to reach their goal, but I confess that I did do my part to help them reach it!

Update 1NOV18: The campaign did not reach its goal by the deadline, and I got an automated email telling me this. But the emails contributors received from the editor herself prior to this spoke of seeing proofs from the printer, as though publication was going to happen. I don’t know where this stands, but I’m guessing this one won’t be added to my shelf.

today is 6MAR18

As you probably already know, today is the birthday of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Nobel laureate and perhaps the best-known practitioner of magical realism. While there has been some backlash against magical realism in recent years, the achievements that were made by Garcia Marquez are undeniable. I’ve read some of his works, including A Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera (twice) plus some shorter works.

The company where I sell my labor is international, and we were recently acquired by (or merged with — depends on who is talking) another international company, expanding my exposure to the world. I have daily interactions with people in India, for example. And this is why I wrote the date in the headline as I did. My company has asked us to use this international standard for writing dates, and I have no problem with it. Thus not an affectation.

The Magnolia Review, with my story “Fire Sermon,” came out today as well. The issue is not online, nor it is in print. It is only available to subscribers in PDF form, though I was given a copy by email to see my story and feel the warmth of pride and a kind of achievement of my own. The link is only to the cover art and the table of contents. Here is a link to the issue where you can read my story (if you want). This was their fire issue. Not only is my story, “Fire Sermon,” in it, but there are stories titled “Fire Pit,” “Dustoff under Fire,” and “A Fire in the Neighborhood,” as well as the poems “The Burn,” “Night Fire,” “Beautiful Fire,” “The Fire Chief’s Son’s Sensory Memories,” “Fire Chasers,” “Orange Flame,” “The Fire Triangle Fuel,” “The Fire Triangle Heat,” “Chicago Fire,” “October Fire,” “Feeling the Fire Nearby,” “Old Flame Burning Forest,” “Cotton House Fire,” and even “Prometheus.” There is also a piece of art in the issue named “The Fire That Night.”

There is a single sentence missing from my story. I don’t know if the editor cut it deliberately or not, and it doesn’t affect the flow or “meaning” of the story much, so I’m not going to sweat it. I haven’t read all of the contributors yet (I sometimes do that when my story mingles with others like this), but I intend to read the fiction at the very least.