Congratulations!

Also, you can buy it online directly from wheatland press' web page. :)

Please do. :)

I have. It's sitting at the post office waiting to be picked up. The Wheatland Press people require delivery confirmation, though, which means I have to go in during normal operating hours rather than early-morning pre-operating hours (the post office lets me pick up non-confirmation-required packages via the same mechanism that local businesses use to pick up giant blocks of mail), which is tough. I should have told them to send it to me at work.

I suppose they want to make sure you get it, but that sort of thing is frustrating. I’ve pretty much given up on having anything sent to my home address now that I no longer live in a building with a fully-staffed management office.

In your case, though, obviously you’re supposed to be sending your administrative assistant down to the post office to sign for it, or you wouldn’t be using a PO box. :)

I'd have loved to have been there, but the folks are in town visiting and Mom just isn't into Klingons.

That's odd -- my copy of the book came with my regular mail on Saturday. No signing needed...

David -- great story, man! I loved the weirdness of Mies' first few interactions/visions with the title character, and thought the ending was well-done. So far it's the best story I've read in the antho -- some of the others didn't maintain their integrity as well as yours did. Some just petered out. Yours ended right at the right time.

Nice work -- you deserved the praise from Nick Gevers' Locus review! Keep it up. When will you Strange Horizons story run?

I believe David's story is tentatively scheduled with us for May 12th.

Enjoy the book, David! I still get a thrill every damn time I'm holding a new book with a story of mine in it. But the first time is the best. :-)

So, David, what was the bigger thrill -- the acceptance, or holding the book in your hands for the first time (and seeing that they spelled your name right and whatnot)?

Looking forward to seeing your story in Strange Horizons. It's a good one. People will like it.

Thanks, Mary Anne! I saw a book with your name on it recently, by the way — one of the Aqua Erotica anthologies was in the Sunnyvale Barnes & Noble, innocently shelved among the fiction anthologies. My mom thought the waterproof paper was pretty cool. :)

Definitely the actual book, Greg. Partly because the “submission” process for this one was a bit unorthodox (Jay Lake telling me at the Strange Horizons workshop that if this had come over the Polyphony transom he’d be beating Deb Layne about the head and shoulders with it, or words to that effect). And partly because, as Mary Anne says, the first time is always special.

Mike, the ending gave me a hell of a lot of trouble — I’d actually had the story sitting around for several months, largely complete except for the last couple of pages, when I decided to take it to the SH workshop and see if I could get some help fixing it. I’m glad to hear the result works for you.

Clearly, your mom is pretty cool. :-)

She doesn’t do too badly. :)

David -- you definitely made the right choices with the ending. I liked the stange blurring of time and action, doing sort of a "Run Lola Run" kind of thing there, because you'd set that up before with the two early incidents b/w Mies and the "girl."

My only question was with Mies' coughing. Was it just the dust, or something that I was missing?

Congrats on the Polyphony story, David. I look forward to reading it, and your Strange Horizons tale too.

Thanks! I think you may have read the SH story already, but everything looks better in print. :)