Toronto-area mom delivers twin girls on New Year’s: one born in 2013, the other in 2014.
Just like in a story I wrote – Eleven Miles There, Twelve Miles Back. The universe is now imitating me!
The Rusty Toque has published my micro-fiction Sudden Infant, a super-short piece to read while waiting for the bus, settling down at work with your warm drink, or slacking off in any way, shape or form. Please check it out!
So, for my story I linked to yesterday, scroll to the bottom and what do I see?
That’s right. They put a bird on it.
In related news, I started watching Portlandia on Netflix on Friday.
My piece Pregnancy Scare is up at the redkitty webzine. Another short piece, perfect for slacking off at work but still looking like you’re reading something super important in case your boss walks by.
Starring might be a bit over-the-top, but I’m there – that bit can’t be denied.
I have a flash fiction piece No One Is Going to Steal Your Refrigerator in the new issue of Sassafras Magazine. This here’s the link to the HTML and this here’s the link to the beautifully rendered PDF file (approx 15 MB to download for those with slower internet connections).
It’s a great magazine with lots of great contributors and my piece is short (under three hundred words) so a perfect literary snack in the middle of your workday.
I went and came back from Costa Rica, my second trip there. I thought I would be sadder because the first time I went to Costa Rica was my happiest time. But I wasn’t. I was stressed sometimes, relaxed others, happy, angry, tired, calm, but not sad. But now I am back and have news to share about things that happened in and around when I was away.
These were actually picked up before I went on holiday but I didn’t have time to post it here. The book on the right is the short story collection of Charles Yu, who wrote probably the only science fiction novel I truly love: How To Live Safely in A Science Fictional Universe, which is a book I buy for people and recommend to people and talk about constantly but I don’t think anyone else I know has read even though I am very strident about other people reading it.
The book on the left is for Tesfa. Maybe you figured that.
I got home from vacation to find a copy of the new Sterling Magazine,
which is exciting because
Can you see it? Right there about half-way down the page under the Fiction heading is my story! The magazine is super-awesome as well, so go out and buy yourself a copy.
Since I have now had my transcripts sent and paid my tuition and been officially accepted, I have gotten into Humber’s One Year Creative Writing by Correspondence Course. I am excited. People I have told are less excited and sort of look at me with the same expression they might if I told them that tomorrow I will be a penguin but that’s okay. I got into a writing program and will have something to do with myself for the next year at least.
Remember me complaining here? Well, Abesha just got accepted to Sterling Magazine! I am so excited that my favourite story now has a home. Of course, I’ll post a link when it’s all set up so everyone can go see. Oooh, my baby has a home, so heartwarming.
I submitted a story to a big name Canadian literary journal. I’d previously submitted this piece to another big name Canadian literary journal. The previous submission received no response (it was for a contest and I think it said only winners would be contacted, but that’s still sort of lazy on their part. That’s what list-servers and mass-emails are for). Then, the next time I tried, I got the rejection above, which is a polite rejection I suppose. Having merit is better than Waste of time or Worst. Story. Ever., but better than Having merit is We would like to include your piece in the next issue of our magazine, which is clearly not what I got. Also, suggestions where it might be suitable for publication would have been helpful, but considering that I even got a rejection letter, I should rejoice. I’m tired of how few rejections I get, instead finding out my stuff wasn’t chosen when the next issue of whatever magazine comes out.
The only pieces I get published tend to be the ones I have no emotional attachment to. This unpublished piece, which now I think has been rejected by ten or eleven journals, from paper to online, from established to starting out, from big fish to minnow, I am too emotionally attached to. Some of my pieces get rejected or accepted and neither fazes me. But this one, each time it is rejected, it feels like a personal insult.
It isn’t an easy piece. It takes place in a country most people have never been to. It has foreign words in it. It’s based on child-logic. It moves forwards in strange little bursts. I wrote it for a creative writing course with Aritha van Herk, who, while she praised it, also tempered the praise with words like experimental and difficult. I understand that the route to publication for this piece will not be easy. I also understand that after almost three years, maybe this piece should simply retire. But, at the same time, I’ve linked this piece in my head to being a writer, i.e. if this story gets published, then I will be a real writer.
I don’t want to consign my writing to the It’s never going to happen pile, but I also don’t know how to break the emotional grip it has on me to do whatever it is I need to do to make this story accessible to anyone other than me.
Here it is: [link removed, see this post], my white whale of story-telling.