Last week I spent an enjoyable hour being interviewedby Susan Marie Groppi for Strange Horizons‘ podcast. Susan was my editor for “Bound Man,” in Twenty Epics and also “Portrait of Ari” for Strange Horizons.

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Susan Marie Groppi spoke with Mary Robinette Kowal. Mary is a puppeteer and writer, and she is also the art director of Shimmer magazine.

Edited to add: I was just listening to this to make sure I didn’t sound like an idiot. Which I mostly don’t, until I try to speak a little Icelandic. In fact, I talk about Iceland a bit and figured I would throw some visual aids up here. If you’ve listened to the podcast and want to know what the Land of a Thousand Throw Pillows looks like, it looks like this.

See! I wasn’t exaggerating my description, was I.

Susan was a really gracious host to the podcast. The only thing she seems to have cut was my closing remark, which was something along the lines of “Strange Horizons is one of the best things going for short fiction.”

Richard Horton does a summary of the different magazines, and my name actually shows up in his summary of Strange Horizons. I’m all the way at the end under “strong work.” It doesn’t give the title of the story, but since the only one that I’ve sold to Strange Horizons is “Portrait of Ari,” it’s pretty easy to figure out which one he was thinking about. I’m very pleased.

If you are curious about how Portrait of Ari started, I can tell you the whole sordid story. I started writing a novel when I was in highschool, and things being what they were, it took me ten years or so to finish the thing. The plot is flawed beyond repair, and believe me, I tried. It’s hard to look at that many words and know that you have to throw them out.

But there were parts of the story that I thought still worked, and there were characters that I loved. Continue reading The original scene of Portrait of Ari

In the world of small things that excite me, we just received a bunch of mail forwarded from our home in Portland. In the box of mail was my check from Strange Horizons for Portrait of Ari. There’s something about getting paid that makes me feel like I really did something. I’ll get all excited again, no doubt, when the story actually appears on the website, but for the moment I have this tangible proof that someone liked the story.

I can’t believe it. Strange Horizons just wrote to say they want to buy Portrait of Ari at pro-rates! I’m beside myself with excitement–really, it takes two of me to express my joy fully.

Here’s the letter.

Dear Mary Robinette Kowal,

We’re pleased to accept your story “Portrait of Ari” for publication in Strange Horizons, at a rate of 5 cents/word.

Our current schedule has this running early in 2006, but that could change.

At some point between now and then, we’ll do a detailed editing pass and send you the results for your approval. But that probably won’t happen for another few weeks.

In the meantime, below please find a copy of our informational questionnaire. Once we receive your response to it, we will send you a check and contract. Please allow two months after sending the questionnaire for processing; if you haven’t received a check and contract within two months, please let us know. And please don’t hesitate to contact our editor-in-chief, Susan Marie Groppi, at editor@strangehorizons.com, if you have any questions about your contract.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask. And thank you for sending us this story!

Sincerely,

–jed

For those of you following along, Susan Marie Groppi is my editor at All-Star Stories. I don’t know how much that had an impact on my story’s acceptance, but I’m counting my blessings in whatever form they take.

Now I just have to hope that tomorrow’s audition will go as well.