After a long period of getting stories rejected – must be about four months now – ‘Julie and Mr Henderson’, a foray into chick lit that started off as a writing exercise has been accepted for publication. If you will just pardon me for a moment – wooohoooooooo!
Ah, that’s better. Normal service will now resume. Thank you for your patience.
As I normally get up at around 5am, I can track the rise and decline of the dawn chorus. It grows from what seems like a roundel of relief at getting through another cold night in January and February, building through the Spring months and reaching a crescendo in May, when the birds have usually already been up for an hour or more before I rise. Then it dies away until now, in August, the city seems all but bare of birds and the sun rises into a silent sky.
5am again this morning. It’s quiet now in August. The birds are silent. Finished rearing their young and either heading off or keeping low. But I do get to watch the sun rise.
Up this morning at 5am to finish writing a review of six nature books for Time Out, which had to be in today, and then the rest of the day transcribing interviews.
The Last Librarian, Or A Short Account Of The End Of The World is now available to non-subscribers at Daily Science Fiction.
How would you answer the question posed at the beginning of the story: What’s more important, books or people?
The normal state of a writer is one of rejection. But a rejection like this one from Brain Harvest is almost better than getting published!
While you are likely doomed wrt growing a mustache as magnificent as ours, you have succeeded in writing one of the best opening lines I’ve ever read since I started reading BH slush. And you also wrote, in < 150 words, a story that is surprisingly subtle, and that says something interesting.
And yet we’ve decided not to buy it for no good reason whatever — in this crop we got some things that suited our moods better, which is probably an infuriating bout of caprice from your point of view. I can only say I’m sorry, and thank you for this story, and to please send us others.