Submitting in Public

I apologize for the late update, but I promise it’s with good reason.

Yesterday, I sent off the manuscript of “Doña Ana Lucía Serrano y la Caja de Venuswood (Lady Ana Lucía Serrano and the Venuswood Box)” to Cantina Press’ Silk & Steel: An Adventure Anthology of Queer Ladies.

Art by Al Norton — The Al Norton picture that started it all.

This particular story has been a bit of a journey. I have of course been working with Doña Ana Lucía in her debut novel, Doña Ana Lucía Serrano …To the Future!, for a year or two. At the end of NaNoWriMo, where I went on vacation to do a contemporary SF/mystery young adult novel about a blonde Southern hivemind of alien squid, I saw the call for submissions. I realized I could do a pretty good 6,000-word pulp story, Lester Dent style, with Doña Ana Lucía, both because it would be fun and because, as Dean Wesley Smith says, “short stories are marketing where they pay you.”

The call for submissions recommended up to 7,000 words. So, over the course of December and into the New Year, I wrote a first draft of seven…

…teen…

…thousand.

Thanks to the good graces and patience of my first readers (and thank you, all of you), I was able to carve down to about 10,500. But something else happened in early January.

That’s right, you found me. By statistical inference, you, right now, are probably someone who found me thanks to the “aristocratic Latina space archaeologist with a sword” comment, or its knock-on effects on Twitter. All of a sudden, I couldn’t name every person who visited RJeanMathieu.com. Claire-Marie Brisson contacted me about an interview over my previous story, “Glâcehouse.” Things began to happen. Apparently, some of you even contacted Silk & Steel on my behalf, without even reading the story, something I don’t think I’ve ever heard of before!

And all the while, I was still trying to carve down another thousand words.

This has been the first story I’ve written, even partially, in public. The first one with real emotional stakes if the market I wrote it for accepts it or not, and not just for me, but for all the people who know about the story and care about it. I’m gonna be honest: I’m still not sure how to handle that. But I’m glad you’re out there with me.

So, finally got it out the door as of yesterday, at 9,900 words. What next? Well, tonight’s Shabbat so my wife will chant her millennia-old Jewish prayers as I light the candles. Tomorrow, I’m seeing Call of the Wild with Pops and Grand-papa, since we’re all three such Jack London and Harrison Ford fans that there’ve been times that London’s books were all the civil words my father and I could speak to each other. And after that?

After that, it’s time for me to go back…