Sale and Public Service Announcement

[nonionay]

I think I might have forgotten to mention I sold a story to Lightspeed. Oops. When it happened, I was at the Real Life equivalent of Livejournal, the Rainforest Writers Retreat, and was able to jump up and down with stupid glee and tell a huge percentage of my friends right there. I was also thinking I should wait to announce it until I had my counter-signed contract, which, as a friend pointed out, is silly.

I can't even describe how happy this makes me. I think Lightspeed is one of the best sf publications out there, and they were the second place I sent this story to. This is the story I wrote for my Clarion application, with which I wanted to impress Samuel Delany. I took some advice from Delany and shamelessly smeared my heart around on the page. (And also thought up one of the strangest sexual/romantic arrangements I could.) I didn't get into Clarion, but Lightspeed's even better.

Anyway, I've been struggling with the technical aspects of getting my edits*. It's all worked out now. But for future reference: if you want to view an editor's comments in Open Office, you need to have a .doc, not a .rtf.

*which otherwise have been painless. I suspect I'm a better person now for having had half my M-dashes mercilessly incinerated.

Comments

[shadesofmauve]

But at least you have the design-chops to use em-dashes, right? Reading text set with hyphens where em-dashes ought to be makes me break out in hives.

Congratulations!

[criada.livejournal.com]

Oh hell, yeah. In theory, anyway. Convention demands I write my M-dashes as double hyphens, and leave replacing them with M-dashes to the typesetters. They tend to drop out, otherwise.

[shadesofmauve]

As long as it IS a double-hyphen, though, it's not nearly so painful! At least you have the visual space.

I also have a dash and ellipsis addiction when writing. If I ever managed to actually do anything productive with writing I suppose I'd need some kind of twelve step program.

[criada.livejournal.com]

At least now I have a bit of a guide. When I start to type a dash, I think, "What would JJA* do?"

*the dash-decimating editor. Not that he's the final word in punctuation authority, but I do need to curb my dash mania.

[darkstar-reborn.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!! That's wonderful. Good for you!

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

[cassiealexander.livejournal.com]

Hey, that is awesome! Congrats on the sale! :D