sold: a story to Nemonymous/Cone Zero

No, no, no -- I'm not just being coy about the story's title. Normally, too, I would give the story's length, but here I'm not going to. You see, my contract for this publication states in part:

The author agrees that the story will be published under its title alone and that the author’s chosen by-line will be (i) shown within CONE ZERO as part of a random list of the authors of the stories included and (ii) specifically assigned to the correct story by title and page number within the projected ninth issue of ‘Nemonymous’ whenever that should be and (iii) similarly assigned upon the Internet, after eight months has elapsed since the publication of CONE ZERO at which time all rights transfer back to the author. 

During the period between now and (iii) above, the author agrees not to divulge the identity of the story’s author nor seek further publication of the story.

For those who aren't familiar with the highly distinguished Nemonymous series of anthologies edited by D.F. Lewis, they work on the principle that -- contrary to what has become one of the primary tenets of modern commercial publishing -- what's important is the quality of the writing, not the identity of the author. When you buy a Nemonymous anthology, then, you know there aren't going to be any passengers among the stories selected; they're all there through merit.

Yes, I am very excited about this . . .

The upcoming volume is #8 in the series, and its subsidiary title is Cone Zero, a near-anagram of the subsidiary title of the previous volume, Zencore. Writers were told their submissions could either be about a Cone Zero (and perhaps even be called "Cone Zero") or, well, they could have no relevance whatsoever to the volume title -- you could hardly hope for a more open brief than that! My own story manages, I think, to fall into both categories; and I imagine several of the other selected tales do likewise.

The anthology is expected to be published before the end of July 2008. Until about next Easter, then, no one except Des Lewis (as editor) and the individual authors will know anything about the authorship of any particular story. The only publicly available information will be that the n stories in the book were written, one apiece, by each of the acknowledged n authors. In the instance of my own piece, since Cone Zero was the first place I sent it (start at the top, sorta thing), the only three people who can identify the story as mine are Des, my wife Pam, and myself.

There's more about this excellent series and its fascinating underlying concept at www.nemonymous.com, where you can also find purchase information for the few remaining copies of Nemonymous #7: Zencore.