Katherine and I just got home from seeing Spring Awakening on Broadway which was an outstanding production.

Smart, with an excellent cast, the musical is both moving and funny. It’s based on an 1891 play by Frank Wedekind which deals with themes that I can’t even imagine audiences watching back then. Sexuality, puberty, homoeroticism and abortion… it’s powerful stuff and somehow the play ends with a note of hope. I highly recommend Spring Awakening and my niece does too.

Every sale makes me happy, but some sales really tickle me. This is one is a very happy thing.

My first three sales were to The First Line so I have a very soft spot for them. The magazine has a simple premise. The first line of a story is so important, but if you asked Mark Twain to write a story starting with, “Call me Ishmael,” you would not get Moby Dick. Every story in an issue of the First Line has the same opening line and the stories differ wildly.

So, when the editors contacted me and said that they’d like to use my story, “The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland,” in their anthology The Best of the First Line I was thrilled. My contributor copy just arrived in the mail. It’s a handsome thing. I’ve just started reading the stories and so far they are good across a wide spectrum of styles.

Yesterday, I sold “Scenting the Dark” to Apex Digest and felt like, given everything, that I should hold onto the news until after April Fool’s was over.

Many thanks to those of you who read a draft of this. Your comments helped me enormously.

Edited to add: The story will be in the next issue of Apex Digest, lucky issue 13 The Table of Contents is:

“Scenting the Dark” (4000 words) - Mary Robinette Kowal
“Blankenjel” (6100 words) - Lavie Tidhar
“In the Seams” (7200 words) - Andrew Porter
“Nature of Blood” (7500 words) - George Mann
“I Know an Old Lady” (500 words) - Nathan Rosen
“The Limb Knitter” (6300 words) - Steven Francis Murphy
“These Days” (5600 words) - Katie Howenstine
“Collecting James” (5500 words) - Geoffrey Girard