Has it been that long ago now? Have I been a “published author” for twenty-five years?
Wow.
You know what, the idea came to me (late today, actually and after a couple of false starts on other topics) to write about my first sale. But it was only after pulling out the box with all my old publications in it and reading the masthead of issue number sixteen of The Wire did it hit me that my first published work was released in January of 1987—fully twenty-five years ago last month.
That makes me feel kinda old. That and the baldness, the knee pain, the gray in my hair and beard, the three-part vision . . . I can see far away with my glasses on, in the middle distance like right now with no glasses, and close up with my reading glasses . . . the joke: My eyes are fine, it’s just my arms aren’t long enough. Anyway, yeah, most days I feel old, but this little fact brought that home a little.
But this wasn’t meant to be some maudlin paean to my long-lost youth, so let’s get on with it.
I called this “My First Sale(s)” because I have two first “sales.”
Other than school projects—you’re talking to the winner of the Hoffman Estates High School Literary Award (Sophomore) for the short story “The Troll,” which you bet your ass was based on an encounter with a D&D troll—the first time someone published my work was a magazine called The Wire.
With all love and respect for The Wire, late of Dearborn Michigan, it’s a little hard to call it a proper magazine. It’s really more like a hand-out: five sheets of colored paper with photocopied text on both sides of all but the last sheet, stapled together with one staple in the upper left-hand corner.
I came in contact with The Wire, and its editor, Sharon Wysocki during my brief but amazing time among the wilds of the late-80s micropress boom. I was already editing and publishing Alternative fiction & poetry, and had started sending out work of my own. Sharon was the first to recognize my brilliance, and there on the second page is my “concrete poem” called “wait a minute.” It’s quite a piece of work, and can only be appreciated in it’s entirety. Ready? Here it is:
You can see the cover bleeding through in this scan, too. Bonus.
I need to start doing that kind of work again. It was surprisingly freeing…
Read the rest in…
Editor and author Philip Athans offers hands on advice for authors of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and fiction in general in this collection of 58 revised and expanded essays from the first five years of his long-running weekly blog, Fantasy Author’s Handbook.
—Philip Athans
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Fantasy Author's Handbook 