The coyotes of Mexicali were bold. They did their business in cantinas, in the middle of the afternoon; the police, well-fed with bribes, looked the other way. Day by day, week by week, people came into Mexicali, carrying backpacks and bundles and small children, and day by day, week by week, they went away again, vanishing while the back of the police was obligingly turned.

The short story I was having so much angst over was “Coyotaje,” and it’s been sold to Ekaterina Sedia’s anthology Bewere the Night. (A sequel anthology of sorts to Running with the Pack, but there’s no connection between my two stories.)

It just goes to illustrate what every writer figures out eventually: that the ease with which a story comes out of your head has no particular relationship to its quality. I’m actually quite proud of “Coyotaje,” even if writing it was like pulling my teeth out one by one with rusty pliers. Not that the difficulty automatically implies quality, either; I’ve had stories that just raced from my fingers which I was also extremely proud of. The two things just don’t correlate at all.

Release date is April, if Amazon can be believed; I’ll keep you updated.