My poem “The Scientist’s Paramour” is out in the new October/November double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. The editors have billed this as their “slightly spooky” issue. Ironically, my poem is one of the least spooky things I’ve written in a while! I’m starting to suspect that everything I write is at least a little bit disturbing, even if I’m actively trying to write something completely mainstream. Ah well.
This is my first appearance in Asimov’s (hopefully not my last!) and I’m very excited to be in the magazine. It’s been one of the top science fiction publications for decades and I’ve really admired the work of the writers who regularly appear in it.
Even if you’ve been working as a fiction writer for a while, sometimes there’s a day when you check the mail and find your contributor's copies of a magazine you’ve long dreamed of seeing your work in, and it’s utterly magical. Holding copies of this issue of Asimov’s was definitely that moment for me.
I had wanted to be in the magazine since I was a teenager, although (also ironically) I hadn't actually tried until recently. I did submit in my mid-20s, before I went to Clarion and realized how much work my short fiction needed to make it of sufficent quality to get published in a top magazine. And then, when I started making regular sales, Asimov's only took snail-mail submissions and I was having good luck with magazines that took emailed submissions. It just didn't seem worth the postage to wait and be rejected when I could get rejected for free! At some point a few years ago, Asimov's joined the rest of the publishing world and started accepting esubs, but I was busy with other projects.
I guess the moral of this particular story is: if you want something, you gotta make time for it and try to get it, or it ain't gonna ever happen.