Jeanne's February Update
A special welcome to the 29 of who signed up for this newsletter as a birthday present to me!
Birthday's are a great time to reflect on our accomplishments, so I wanted to share a photo of what many authors call a 'brag shelf'. Each of the books in the image below is an anthology that contains one of my short stories. I got my first rejection of one of my submitted short stories back in September of 2013. A bit more than 5 years of submitting my fiction to magazines and anthologies has yielded the 7 acceptances you see below - along with 94 rejections. My most rejected story, Cold Bargain, was published over the summer (20 rejections, for those keeping score at home).
In the order displayed above:
- In Her Arms in Stepmothers and the Big Bad Wolf: Fairy Tale Villians Reimagined – Science Fiction short story (November 2014)
- Cold Bargain in Perilous Princesses – Fantasy short story (June 2018)
- Unsealed in 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide – Middle-Grade Science Fiction short story (January 2015)
- View From Above in 2016 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide – Middle-Grade Science Fiction short story (November 2015)
- The 17th Quadrennial Intergalactic Neo-Cultural Expo and Science Fair in Brave New Girls – YA Science Fiction short story (August 2017)
- J in D is for Dinosaur (Alphabet Anthologies) – Science Fiction short story (February 2017)
- Q in E is for Evil (Alphabet Anthologies) – Science Fiction short story (May 2018)
Not displayed above is my story Quarantine - winner of the Society of American Archivists 2018 Archives Short Fiction Contest – Science Fiction short story in December 2018. It will soon be published in the SAA professional association magazine - but even then, it won't visually add much to the stack pictured above.
It isn't too late. You still have time to order your own copy of the 2019 calendar I created featuring my photographs. These are the images I chose for the month of February:
All three of these are from my "look down" series, that captures the details of the ground beneath our feet. I love how nature's attack on our constructed world can result in such beauty. I love that I walk past the cracked sidewalk featured in the lower right-hand corner every weekday morning when I go to board my bus to head downtown to work. In fact, my husband caught a snapshot of me taking that very photo. If you ever wondered what it looks like when I kneel in the middle of the sidewalk - now you know.
The sooner you order a calendar, the sooner this could be hanging on your wall.
While this newsletter is aimed at my creative pursuits, I can't let the recent publication of the non-fiction book I edited pass without a mention. Focused on digital preservation, this book is an extension of my work as an archivist. I calculated that it took 1020 days from the first email I received from the publisher to the first copy in my hands. Curious what ended up in the final product? Learn more about Partners for Preservation.