Sale

[desperance]

Does it count as a sale, if the story's not new and monies are purely notional?

Yes, yes, of course it does! The blessed Andy Cox (who is pretty much sustaining the professional genre magazine in the UK all by himself - well, with lots of help from m'friend Dave Mathew and Jetse et al, but Andy is sole proprietor of Interzone and Black Static and Crimewave, which between them cover the spread) is hoping to publish a 'Best Of' anthology to commemorate the end of The Third Alternative. Not that it's gone away, exactly, only transmuted into Black Static, but still, it seems an opportunity. As I pointed out my own self, so if this book does happen it will be All My Own Idea. And, what is more, I will be in it. Andy wants to reprint my story "Going the Jerusalem Mile" (which was also picked by Ellen Datlow for the Year's Best; that boy done good).

Which is, of course, all encouragement to write the other stories in the cycle. I have all their titles written up on the back of an envelope; the whole collection will be called Ex Cathedra, and individual stories are "An Insider's Guide to the Mind of God" and "Mappa Lundi" and "The Battle Flag of the Republic" and so on, with little interspersal vignettes called Rex Cathedra and Lex Cathedra and Sex Cathedra...

Yup. All set in a cathedral. Whoo, yeah.

[Edit: here's a link to my favourite review of the story. Now I wonder why I like this one...?]

Comments

[davidbarnett.livejournal.com]

That's the one! Couldn't for the life of me remember the name of the anthology.

Was it about a forced march?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's the one. It's called "Something's Coming Home" (I just checked). I'd read a news report about how refugees returning to [the sub-Saharan country of your choice] were being forced to walk fifty miles inland from the border, just to prove they didn't have Aids. Which, as I have a long-established history of writing about Aids (and I like to think a normal human quotient of outrage), made it natural territory for a story; and then Nick said "Football story. Want," and I remembered thinking how strange it would be to be [the sub-Saharan footballer of your choice] flying to the World Cup, that little cigar-shaped capsule of luxury above so very much of the other thing, and there it was...

[davidbarnett.livejournal.com]

It always stuck in my mind, that story. Along with the one (not sure who wrote it) which posited a future World Cup in a period when the game was so riddled with drugs that each country's team was allowed one drug of choice, so you had the Colombians whizzing around the pitch. England's was, of course, beer.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

"England's Shame" - Geoff Nicholson.