Shameless self-promotion #2 (or "O wad some pow'r" etc.)
12 o'clock, August 9, 2004
The September issue of Asimov’s is on the stands, with my name on the cover and everything. (When you get to the line of dialogue that has the word sure in it twice, substitute sir for one of them. Which, I leave up to you, but there is a right answer and a wrong one.)
This story, “The Third Party”, is my first pro print magazine sale, and it’s an interesting experience, reading this story this way. It’s meant to be the first part of a novel, a novel I spent half of last year outlining and then set aside. Two or three people saw the outline. The main feedback I got was, “What’s with the monks?” I think that in not talking about the rest of it they were being kind.
Reading it this way, presented differently (Asimov’s really needs to go to two columns, or else budget for more paper), with some time and distance, it’s easier to put myself into the shoes of someone reading it for the first time, whether here in Asimov’s or as some of the opening chapters of a novel. Easier to read it not in terms of what I had intended to write next, but in terms of what possibilities arise from this beginning.
Easier to see that the novel I write could be much more interesting than the one I would have written from last year’s outline.
I doff whatever metaphorical cap I still possess to you, sir.