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sold: "Breaking Laws"
Aug. 30th, 2008 10:15 amVera Nazarian has bought my 7000-word story "Breaking Laws" for her forthcoming anthology Sky Whales and Other Wonders. I'm naturally delighted.
"Breaking Laws" is one of a pair of stories I wrote in the months before my heart surgery in which I tried to sort of reshape urban fantasy a little. I used to love this subgenre, but now whatever original work there might be going on in it seems to have been subducted beneath a tectonic slab of template series that feature vampire hunters, witch detectives, werewolf superstuds . . . (Yes, I realize I'm generalizing excessively, and, yes, I know a couple of these series are OK. But, most of them, I can't even get through the cover blurbs, which all seem identical.)
Part of my motivation for writing the two stories was also the connection to my interest in noir, the written fiction as well as the movies, even though "Breaking Laws" itself (despite the title!*) isn't really a noir-influenced piece at all -- unlike my longish story "Will the Real Veronica LeBarr Please Stand Down?", due to appear shortly in Postscripts, which positively reeks of noir influence, as of course does my Ed McBain-inspired novella The City in These Pages, due by the end of the year from PS Publishing. Both of these were written longer ago; the latter is also very definitely a piece of urban fantasy.
Gosh, this all sounds very pompous.
Anyway, I'm obviously thrilled to bits that Vera wants to add my story to what promises to be a highly distinguished contents list for the anthology.
*Talking about the story's title, this may well be changed for the final appearance. At the moment "A Handful of City" is a strong contender.
