So, that box the post office tried to deliver yesterday wasn’t Shimmer.
It contained my contributor copies The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, volume two
I want to give a shout out Mike Munsil, who created Liberty Hall Writers, an online group that does weekly flash challenges. My story, “Evil Robot Monkey” came out of one of those. Each weekend, you get a trigger and then have an hour and a half to write a story.
The story itself is sort of the product of two triggers. See, at Shimmer we have a running gag which stemmed from when we were testing the submission system. Beth sent in a trial submission called “Harry Potter and the Evil Robt Monkeys!”1 Brilliant. I decided that whatever the trigger was, my story would have that title. The trigger itself was a piece of clockwork art.
Here’s the first bit of the story.
Sliding his hands over the clay, Sly relished the moisture oozing around his fingers. The clay matted down the hair on the back of his hands making them look almost human. He turned the potter’s wheel with his prehensile feet as he shaped the vase. Pinching the clay between his fingers he lifted the wall of the vase, spinning it higher.
You can see that I kept the hairy potter.
- The misspelling is intentional. You’d be amazed by how many people send in stories with misspellings within the first five lines. [↩]
Congratulations on the anthology! It sounds interesting.
“Hairy potter” … *snicker*
I’ve just started reading the other stories and gotta say, George Mann has put together a terrific book.
Congrats!
Also crosses fingers that your Shimmer will eventually arrive.
On a side note, I’m hoping that the Solaris SF book will make it to our shores.
Oh, Shimmer is on the way. It’s just that staff copies get sent out last. I’m sure it will get here faster than when I was living in Iceland.
The Solaris book is available through Amazon.
Fortunately, no one else was at home when I read the “hairy potter” bit so I could laugh as loud as I wanted.
I can picture that! Makes me grin.
Thanks for the shout out, Mary!
Congratulations on the story. Well deserved.
Mike
This story would not exist if it were not for you.