recipe for banishing ick
I don’t do stomach bugs. No, really. The last time I had one like this, I was five or so. Ergo, being laid out flat today by such a thing is both deeply unpleasant and highly annoying, since it means no karate for me.
But! Nothing like some good news to perk me up a bit.
Mike Allen, the excellent gentleman behind Clockwork Phoenix and my story therein, “A Mask of Flesh,” has just purchased another story for Clockwork Phoenix 2!
This is “Once a Goddess,” which long-time readers of this journal have heard me mention before. It is the current (and hopefully future) champion of the “longest stretch from idea to draft” contest, as I came up with the seed for it in the summer of 2001, and only shoved it through to completion because I was bound and determined to submit it to the anthology this fall. But now it also holds the title for “shortest stretch from draft to sale” — in fact, it is the first story I have ever sold right out of the gate. So it took its own sweet time coming out of my head, but the result was worth the wait.
The opening line, as cited before in that “first line of unfinished stories” meme:
For eleven years Hathirekhmet was a goddess, and then they sent her home.
This story goes out to all the real-world girls who have been Kumari, and then had to find their way in life as ordinary women.
