Monday, September 05, 2011

"The Stinky Men" shoves off

I've got the original typed manuscript of "The Stinky Men" ready to go out in tomorrow's mail to Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF. I doubt he'll buy it - Gordon is a tough sell - but he's the last of the major genre publishers who still only takes mailed submissions.

This is the story I typed while sitting at my table in the dealers' room at ArmadilloCon. I typed eight pages that Saturday, and then, after reading what I had Saturday night, returned on Sunday and backed up a page and picked up again to come up with a better ending. So pages 1-7 were typed Saturday and 8-11 on Sunday.

Although I doubt Gordon will buy the story, I want him to at least see it, if for nothing but for the novelty's sake, so he can say years from now some crackpot in East Texas was still sending him typed stories in 2011! In the meantime I had better start typing it up in a Microsoft Word file.

I'm actually sending him the original, but needless to say, I've made a few photocopies.

The story came in at 2,860 words - by my manual word count. This is the sixth short story I've finished this year, the 95th in the past ten years. Right now I have dozen stories in various slush piles.

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