So here’s here’s how it often goes. First you were a reader, and you read a lot, and you thought, hey, I should write something like what I read, because, you know, how cool would that be? So you try. And it sucks, and you go through that thing where your creative faculty isn’t as strong as your critical faculty and you want to just quit, it is so ugly but you keep at it.

God Knows Why.

At a certain point, in your reading and writing, your stuff seems good enough. It’s distincly like some of the stories you read in the magazines. It still isn’t selling. You haven’t broken through. You start to obsess; are you even being read? Do they think you suck because of the stories you sent a few years back which kinda did suck? Do they have a preconception that is blinding them to the evident ‘good enough’ quality to your work?

Then you realize, well, good enough isn’t really good enough, is it? You’re going to have to rise up past the median point, make an impression. Those median stories you’re reading may well be from people who broke through long ago, containing worlds and characters and a voice which has somehow proven itself already. Which you haven’t done. Yet.

Most short fiction markets want to be among the first to publish someone who goes on to be a Big Deal. I mean, that’s part of the point of a magazine. A magazine is a place where the reputations of authors are rubbed against each other, with some of the luster of the bigger names adhering, hopefully, to those whose name mean nothing when selling magazines. Like mine.

I made my first pro sale in the 90s, to a magazine called Aboriginal SF, but thereafter wrote a few utterly toxic stories with radioactive content. The content was politically offensive and I didn’t have the skill to really transcend these tales off-putting nature. Nobody told me this, but looking back I can see, yeah, nobody was going to publish that. Anyway, I quit for twenty years.

But I’ve got a streak of 8 pro sales to two top teir markets now, Asimov’s and F&SF, for stories written over the last decade; some brand new, my breakthrough story for example, some rewritten, some stories finished which I started a decade ago, and some older stories with rewritten endings. New stuff of mine continues to not sell, older refurb’s are selling, and stuff I’m writing now is often not right in ways even I can see.

So I’ve broken through, in one way, without breaking through, inside, in my process, in knowing what to write or if what I’m writing is actually working. I’d hoped that once I broke through, I’d sell most of what I wrote, because I’d know how to write things that sold, and while I have more insight now that I used to, I’m not there yet.

Maybe I never get there. Maybe that’s all right.

Oh, but the novel calls; not a specific novel, yet, but just the idea of something that long. I’ve gotten enough Signs. It’s time to write one. But which one? I’m collecting advice from authors on how to think about this; I’m told to not try to second guess the market; to write something I care enough about to live with for a good long time. So. I’ll do that.

Soon. Soon? I hope.

Annus mirabilis is a Latin phrase that means wonderful year, “year of wonders” or “year of miracles”. (This term  originally referred to the year 1666, celebrating its non-awfulness even though it had the number of the beast, ‘666’ in it.) My Annus Mirabilis was my 50th. I’d returned to writing a year earlier and had rebuilt a long neglected  community, reconnecting with people I’d written with in the 90s, and made a bunch of new friends as well. I’d decided to give short fiction one last shot.

Long story short. I had a great year, and, the world didn’t end. (Coincidence? I think not.)

To celebrate this I’m re-publishing the story that started my lucky streak. (The rights reverted to me a month after the original publication at Asimov’s.)

If you intended to read the story but missed the issue, here it is again. If you’re a friend of mine that doesn’t read SF, you still might want to give it a try. If you’re a young writer wondering what a breakthrough story might look like, check it out. This worked for me.

Oh, and big confession time, I wrote this story for myself, had fun writing it, and never thought it would sell.

Amazon Book Description

(Amazon) Publication Date: March 11, 2014

My first of six sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine in 2013. It’s one of my favorites. What’s it about? Well.

When the Aliens make a visitation request, you get the day off work, which is nice. Most people go about their lives normally, after the interview. A few disappear. And a few try to make a few bucks, hawking new religions on the interwebs. Joel isn’t entirely sure which group he’ll fall into, but one thing’s for sure…

He could use the day off. He’s got a ton of laundry do to.

So the March issue of Asimovs will soon be off the stands, completing the 90 day span in which my stories have been pushed out to 25,000 readers or so, mostly as paper. Newsstand sales make up less than 10% of that number, but they do occur, as this photo conclusivelly proves. Knowing that an issue exists, on the stands, with my name in it, my story in it, has been wonderful.

I walk from magazine stand to magazine stand and I look at them, on the rack. I’ve spent at least one day for each issue doing this. I guess this should be embarrassing. But it isn’t.

Small upticks in circulation at Asimovs and Analog, combining paper and digital sales suggest that on the whole that e-readers aren’t simply cannibalizing print sales but are broadening the genre short fiction readership. Good new for those of us writing it! The end of the fiction magazine has been somewhat delayed, which is a good thing.

Still, short fiction nowadays is mostly a training ground, a place to find a voice and learn a craft and find a community. It is also of course a destination, a thing-in-itself, worthy, like poetry or fine art, of serious attention and respect. As with fine art and poetry a handful of rock-stars even make a kind of living mostly doing it.

But writers making a living write at longer lengths. My first novella sale to Asimovs in 2013 represents my first step down that path, away from short fiction, towards the novel. It is time to get cracking. I’m healthy, I have the time and the support, and for the first time in my life, I can safely say, I seem to be able to to this at a professional level. Sheila Williams and Gordon Van Gelder are people I respect. These are magazines I respect.

When I have read them over the years, I’ve never really felt, ever, “why is this in here?” Some stories are more to my tastes than others, but in every story I’ve read, I’ve caught some spark, some flash of quality, some thing that made me think, yeah, OK, I see why they bought this.

Now I have no choice but have a similar feeling about my own work. I’m in this game.

I may not be to everyone’s taste. I’m probably a tiny footnote in the grand history of the genre. But my ticket has been stamped. I am on my way. If I am ever to do this thing the time is now.

I read the magazines and reach out to my fellow writers, my TOC mates (writers who share a table-of-contents) and I walk the icy streets of Boston and Cambridge, looking at my issues on the rack, reminding myself, that my time is now. I’m a late bloomer. Maybe that’s OK. Keep moving. Make your mark.

I invite my fellow writers, young and old, to reach out to each other. Write notes to the writers you have loved your whole life, and tell them so. Write notes to your TOC mates. Do workshops and conventions. Bring yourself to this thing. I left fiction for twenty years and now I’m back and it is still here, still real, still important, as meaningful as you yourself make it.