Sold: The Beach of the Drowned

In line with the precedent established by imago1 . . .

Dave Hutchinson (hutch0) is going to be editing the next volume of the New Writings in the Fantastic series, and a couple of days ago announced at http://hutch0.livejournal.com/55617.html his Table of Contents for the anthology. Much to my delight, there at the bottom of the list (so presumably intended to fill the coveted Grand Finale position in the book, rather than serve as the Appendix in small print which nobody reads) is my 16,250-word novella "The Beach of the Drowned".

It's a kind of alternate timelines cum afterlife cum fantastic voyage cum ghost story cum parallel lives-type sciencefictional/fantasy piece -- which is to say, it's the sort of odd duck that would give the average magazine editor heeby-jeebies but which the New Writings in the Fantastic series -- and Hutchinson in particular, luckily for me! -- smiles upon.

The odd thing is that I wrote the story eighteen months or two years ago and was very pleased with it; however, recognizing its odd-duck status and mindful of those editorial heeby-jeebies, I couldn't think of anywhere to send it so stuck it in a metaphorical drawer. Perhaps I can slip it into a collection one day when no one's looking, I thought. It was only when Hutchinson mentioned the other day he was just about to close the anthology that I had this sudden brainwave and . . .

Ahem. So I'm the Slow-on-the-Uptake Kid.