Pod Escapades

I started as an Associate Editor at Escape Pod on September 15th and have read around 50 slush pile stories since. I’d say more but I’m actually not sure how much more I’m allowed to say about the stories themselves. Will ask the Assistant Editors if I can say more about it, because I’m absolutely dying to say more about it.

I’ve also started querying The Novel*, which is an exercise in masochism that short story rejections DO NOT prepare you for. It’s one thing to spend a few weeks (months?) polishing a short story to have it rejected, but it’s another to spend months (years?) laboring over wordcounts that are unsuitable for polite society, only to not even receive a response.

Between this, work being what it is, and maybe having to move continents, blog neglect seems quite justified.

* The Novel refers to the current completed novel. The novel may be, but should not be pre-emptively confused with, The Novel, i.e. the work that will make all this work worth it, or The Novel, i.e. the novel after which I will give up and return to short story land. The Novel is general, particular, diffuse, perfectly spherical, frictionless, expansive, subject to the Navier-Stokes equations, and also entirely biodynamic. The Novel is The Novel.**

** As you can see, The Novel is making me lose my fucking mind.