Popping Corks
I’ve sold a story! I’ve actually sold a story! Champagne all round. It’s for an anthology. Horror stories of 100 words or fewer. I got an email during the week. They will be sending me a contract. Nobody’s ever sent me a contract before. How does it work?
When I say sold, I think it all depends on how much money the anthology makes. Nobody will be queuing up for my autograph yet. But I’m over the moon. I feel like spring is in the air. 2013 has started in earnest, and it’s going to be good.
As if that wasn’t enough, Microhorror have published two more of my flash fiction stories. God bless Nathan Rosen. I feel like I’ve won the lottery. I showed one of the stories to a work colleague yesterday. I brought it up on my screen, beaming proudly, and said: “All my own work.” He smiled at me. Scrolled down to the end and wandered off.
I haven’t told my wife about Microhorror. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I feel like I’ve got wonderful pieces of news, but can’t tell her. I don’t think she’d understand. I showed her one of my horror stories once. A ghost story set in the present day. She shrugged. To her mind, ghost stories should be set in the past (presumably in Victorian England). And she didn’t like my characters. Characters I thought were likeable. My writing class liked the story in question; my wife didn’t.
I’m in a similar position to Rob Fleming, hero of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity 9one of my all-time favourite novels). Rob is a devotee of ‘serious’ pop music: Otis Redding, Stax, etc. His girlfriend likes Simply Red, and Art Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes, which are anathema to Rob. To him, it is what you like, rather than what you’re like, which is important. And yet, when she leaves him, Rob is devastated.
So my work exists in a separate universe. I can tell my wife if I earn any money- I’ll give her the money- but not if I publish anything which doesn’t pay. It’s similar when I have writer’s block. It’s no good me telling my wife; she’ll simply shrug, say: “You’ll get over it”, then remind me of all the other blessings in my life.
Yet when I am suffering from writer’s block, nothing else in my life has the same savour. Unless I’m writing something, I’m really only half living. Conversely, nothing to me seems quite as bad when I’ve got a contract underway.
Three more little gems from Microhorror, none of them mine (honestly):
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