While looking for a place to submit a contemporary fantasy short story, I ran into Lightspeed‘s submissions call for science fiction by queer authors, and I cursed my luck. By their definition, I count as a queer author (they accept asexual people!), and I really wanted to submit to them; however, I’m more of a fantasy author, and most of my science fiction still leans fantasy, so I didn’t have anything I felt comfortable submitting. I wrote a story about clones in 1999, but it’s terrible (and it’s already been published on a website). I didn’t have a story.
So then I decided to think on it and come up with a science fiction idea. Another clone-related idea struck me, and even though the submissions call for Lightspeed claims they do not require the stories to contain any queer content, this story DID have an element of queerness along with its humorous, sort of depressing themes of identity.
I started writing it last Friday, but had some real trouble ending it. I finally chewed on it long enough to develop an ending, and I’m satisfied with it, but . . . I’m not sure it’s any good. Because the protagonist is kind of absurd and the tone of the story sort of tries to be humorous, I decided to opt for a funny title, so right now I’m calling it “Everyone’s Gay in Space.”
It’s definitely not as good as I thought it was going to be when I thought of it, but I’ll still probably submit it. So far I’ve never been unsuccessful when writing a story for a specific submissions call, so that’s on my side. But considering I only did it once and therefore succeeded 100% of the time but only once, I don’t know that that’s much to brag about. And Lightspeed is sure to be really picky. But hey, if they don’t like it I have time to write another one, and if they still don’t like it, well, maybe I’ll be able to get into their queer fantasy issue. 😉
It’s about 6500 words and it’s about a guy who meets his clone for the first time.
Yeah, the title does sound kinda funny. But meeting your clone for the first time, maybe gut-wrenching. Hope I get to read it.
Still haven’t gotten ahold of The Invisible Orientation but it’s at the top of my list, and I will say something about it on my new blog; just started a WordPress version of Resonant Enigma (Google was giving me grief so I dumped ’em). There’s a link to it here somewhere, in my name I expect.
Later,
Albert
Yep, that’s the idea–a human experience that wouldn’t be familiar to readers, depicting meeting a version of yourself, sort of. And what if your clone basically thinks you’re a jerk and doesn’t relate to you at all? Not exactly the person you expect to reject you. . . .
I’ll look forward to whatever you say about my book!