Look, a post that has nothing to do with the Driftwood story!
I don’t know how I missed it when the notice went out, but Farah Mendlesohn is editing an anthology in response to a proposed British bill that would make illegal “the glorification of terrorism.” This sparks, of course, concerns about free speech, and how the government might use it to clamp down on political dissent (whether in artistic expression, history books, etc). So Farah’s anthology is called Glorifying Terrorism, and it’s chock-full of stories that challenge the restrictions of that proposed law.
Including mine.
As I said, I missed the initial call for stories, but I e-mailed Farah to ask if she was still considering submissions, and she said she might, if any of the ones she was waiting on edits from fell through. Long story short, she’s bought “Execution Morning.” The Kitsune is likely one of the only people reading this who’s familiar with it; it has the signal honor of being the first short story I wrote that didn’t profoundly suck. I’ve tinkered with it off and on in the years since, but as it’s a story about unpleasant and dubiously moral decisions in the face of terrorism, it’s met with extremely mixed reactions, ranging from the Kitsune’s awed silence when she first read it down to people telling me it’s a complete and utter failure as a story. (So that lack of profund suckage is, I guess, in the eye of the beholder.)
As per a recent discussion on Jim Hines’ journal, I’m not usually good at putting myself in an editor’s path like this; if Glorifying Terrorism hadn’t originally been an open-call anthology, I might not have tried. But hey, pushiness pays off: another sale for me, and that story finally has a home where it belongs.
And kudos to Farah for this move. She’s fronting the money for the antho herself, paying well more than a token fee for the stories, and publishing it through a political press. When I’m constantly seeing listings for anthos promising their authors “a share of the royalties” (which will translate to nothing), this makes a really stunning contrast.
