Package from Romania

I haven't been very diligent in posting on this blog since coming back from world con in August. Frankly, the whole time from April until August was miserable; with myself and all the other Sad Puppy authors on the constant attack from the SF literary establishment. If there was one lesson I have learned, it is that trying to please everybody — and sometimes anybody — is impossible. So I've decided pretty much do my own thing. Despite all the collections and publications I've had over the years, this is still only an avocation for me. I enjoy my day job and I'd go nuts on the boredom if I ever tried to stay home and write full-time.

Although my short story "On a Spiritual Plain" may not perhaps have been the best story published in 2014, and maybe it wasn't deserving of a Hugo award, but it really wasn't the absolute piece of shit that all the critics claimed it was. Once the literati lynch mob was in full howl, there was no possibility of it being evaluated fairly. As the results of the Hugo voting showed, the establishment wanted the non-PC authors taught a lesson.

During the witch hunt against the sad puppies self-appointed members of the PC cadre would visit this blog to collect incriminating information. That's another reason I've not been particularly keen on posting here; anything I say can and will be distorted, misinterpreted and used against me by some people who apparently have no gainful employment except as character assassins.

However, there were glimmers of fairness in various places, and a few months ago I was surprised to get a contract from the Romanian SF magazine CPSF for the reprint of "On a Spiritual Plain". Apparently that they didn't get the memo from the American SF literati about what a bunch of rotten authors the Sad Puppy nominees were.

The magazine was published last month with the translated version of my story. This is the first time I've had a foreign reprint. After months and months of being called every name in the book, it was a nice ego boost.

It took a full week to get my payment wired from Bucharest here to my credit union in East Texas; I'm sure the delay was all in my end. The bank CEO actually told me they had never received a wire transfer from overseas before. The nice part is that I got almost as much money for the reprint as for the original publication.

And today -ta da – I got my author's copies in the mail. The package supposedly left Bucharest September 10, so took a while to get here.

This finally gave me the opportunity to see the black and white interior art that accompanied my story, and it was wonderful. All in all, this was a great experience, and I can see why as authors gain experience and publications they enjoy foreign reprints. I know I've talked to Joe Lansdale about his Italian reprints and Howard Waldrop in his reprints in Finland, and now I've had the same thing happen to me.

It's neat.