So, I’m back, and since I care about this odd little community I suppose I should offer some kind of explanation for my absence -- especially since I was a content editor, and sort of walked out on the job with only a brief message to the CE group saying that things had been rough. So, what’s been going on with me lately?
DOWN: My stepfather died last fall. He had been sick for a long time, had gone through several operations that didn’t help much, found himself housebound and helpless for too long with not much chance of improvement, and most likely felt that he was a burden to his family. So he shot himself. This is the third time I’ve lost a "father" – I never knew my real father, and my first stepfather died when I was 18. I don’t know if I even want to get another chance in this game. I’m pretty sure my mother doesn’t.
UP: A little while after that, we found out that we were pregnant. This took us both completely by surprise, as we had pretty much assumed that if it was going to happen, it would have happened several years ago. Nonetheless, it’s very welcome. Daughter No. 2 will be arriving in early May.
DOWN: Just when we were getting back to feeling normal, my wife got a call from South Africa, saying that her brother had been stabbed to death. At first we thought it was something gang-related, which given his lifestyle would not have been all that surprising, but it turned out his wife stabbed him. The police ruled it an accidental death, and there has not been, nor will there ever be, any kind of serious investigation into it. All kinds of bitter here.
UP: I spent several months last year working on revisions of the story I originally called “The Seeds of our Tomorrows” for the editor of a new anthology called Tangle. I got a couple of stories published last year, but I’m especially happy about this one for several reasons: it’s a story I originally wrote for the Wordmongers' Masque right here on E2, it features a couple of characters that I really like and might have a novel for (and the editor has already expressed an interest in that book), and the anthology it’s in is one of the best publications any of my stories have appeared in thus far. It’s a collection of SF/fantasy/horror short stories and novellas with gay protagonists. The book came back from the printers a few weeks ago, and it’s lovely: a really great bunch of stories and high-quality design. We changed the title of my story to “The Coming of the Fourth Dawn”, which I don’t like as much as my original title – but other than that, the editorial process was most satisfactory.
(If anyone here is interested, you can order Tangle through the publisher, Blind Eye Books, or through Amazon. Let me just note that Blind Eye is a newish small press dedicated to gay and lesbian spec-fic, run by excellent people – also a worthy destination for your submissions, should you have any that fit the job description.)
BACK: I’m mostly accessing E2 on lunch breaks at work now, as my laptop is dead. I did go and buy myself a Blackberry for Christmas, and I can read E2 fairly well on it (faster than my home connection by a long shot), but it’s a pain to do any “real” writing on that. Between that and the baby coming in about six weeks, I really can’t promise that I’ll be terribly active on the site. But I’m back, and now you know where I’ve been. Thanks go out to all those who continued to send me messages, chings and trinkets while I was gone!