I was actually online before there were blogging platforms, but I started my blogger account four years ago today.  That’s right kiddies, I remember when I had to hard-code HTML both ways, uphill in the snow.  Not like you young whipper-snappers today with your fancy CMS and CSS and LJ and all the other new-fangled acronyms.

My first post also includes this:

I’m also terribly excited because the day before the Iceland call, I got an email from The First Line¹ telling me that they want to publish my short story “The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland.” This is my second short story sale, and I’m starting to feel like a real writer.

Funny thing, that.

1. Just because I’m very fond of them and want to see the magazine do well, I’ll remind you that “The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland,” wound up in their Best of anthology this year. You can also listen to me read it if you prefer your fiction in audio format. [↩]

The reading went quite well. We had a full house, which was a relief. I was afraid no one would come and besides our friends, there were even people that we didn’t know there. We sold copies of the anthology!

Matt McHugh and M. M. De Voe were both very good readers and hearing their stories out loud added a lot to both.

Best of all, Matt hooked set up his mic and recorded the evening. I present to you my story, The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland.

For me, one of the most annoying things is that I’ve been recording so much lately that I’ve developed some bad live reading habits. I’ve trained myself to listen for minor stumbles — things that no one would notice live, but which are unacceptable in recorded form — and to pause, then restart the line, which is totally wrong when reading live. In any case, it should be interesting for you to hear the difference between me reading live after hearing me read for recordings.

If you’ve got nothing else going on, swing down to the KGB bar at 85 E. 4th Street at 7:00 tonight to hear short stories read by Matt McHugh, M. M. De Voe and me.

Here’s a teaser of the one I’ll be reading tonight, which appears in the new anthology, The Best of The First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006.

I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties, I legally changed my name to Eve. As you have guessed in your letter, after the shocking affair of the Dutch steamship Friesland, my dear friends Dr. Watson and Mr. Sherlock Holmes suggested that my safest course of action would be to distance myself from my family.

But I get ahead of my story; I have not Dr. Watson’s gift for explaining Mr. Holmes’s methods, and I fear your wish that I relay the particulars of this strange case may be met with inadequate measures.

On the twelfth of October, 1887, I was being taken by the steamship Friesland from our home on the Venetian isle of Murano to Africa; there to meet my betrothed, Hans Boerwinkle, a man several years my senior with whom my father had very recently made arrangements. Living as we do now, in the nineteen-twenties, it is difficult to remember what a sheltered life we girls led forty years ago, but at the time it seemed natural that my brother, Orazio Rinaldo Paride Grisanti, escorted me as chaperone.

Did I mention it’s a bar? Fiction and drinks, can you ask for a better combo?

I’ll be joining M.M. DeVoe and Matt McHugh as we read stories from The First Line at KGB

Celebrating its 10-year anniversary, the literary magazine “The First Line” — where all stories in an issue begin with same opening line — presents an evening with some of its favorite writers. Three authors will read select work from the new anthology, “The Best of The First Line: Editors’ Picks 2002-2006,” and share some insights on writing for this unique quarterly.

Pass the word and come hear us on July 24th at 7pm.

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.

I woke up during the night with a toothache, which was Just Not Fair. At all. I tried sleeping anyway, I tried taking ibuprofen. Nada. In fact, it got worse, radiating through my ear and sending shafts of steel straight through my brain and out the top of my head. Visions of root canal opened in my head.

So, I got up around four and called my dentist’s office, leaving a fairly pathetic voicemail asking them to call me when they got in and make the pain go away.

At 8:05, five minutes after they opened, Angela called and sounded so sympathetic on the phone that I knew I was doomed. They got me in with an immediate appointment. Definitely doomed.

I walked in and apologized for being ill and the technician’s eyes lit up. “Sinuses?” she said.

I nodded, “And a cough. Sorry about that.”

“I have three kids, it’s not a problem.” She went to the computer screen. “So tell me what’s going on.”

“Well, about three days ago, I woke up and my jaw hurt. I thought ‘Jeez, have I been clenching my jaw.’ But then last night it got worse and woke me up.” I proceeded to describe those symptoms. “It hasn’t been as bad since I got up.”

“But the pain medication didn’t do anything?”

“It kept getting worse.”

“Let’s get an x-ray and see what’s going on there.”

She worked really fast, remembering that I have a hair-trigger gag reflex, and got the image up on their nifty computer screen. Then the doctor came in. She was quickly caught up on my symptoms and then looked at the x-ray.

“See that thin white line dipping down across the roots of your teeth?” When I nodded, she continued. “That’s your sinus cavity. It’s pressing down on your nerves. We’ll go ahead and test to make sure that it’s not a dental issue, but I think you’re looking at a sinus infection.”

She poked, prodded, stuck cold things on my teeth and everything was normal. Yay! No root canal. (By the way, thank you to Angela and Brandi at Laurelhurst Dentistry who sent me my xray.)

So then I trotted off to the doctor and repeated my symptoms. He shook his head, “I am exactly the right doctor for you to see because I am three weeks ahead of you with these symptoms. So I know that the first line antibiotic does nothing on this particular strain. Which means that you don’t have to spend five days wondering why you aren’t getting any better. What you have is the flu that’s going around plus a secondary infection.”

I somehow got to this point in my life without ever having had a sinus infection, ear ache or toothache. At the moment it feels like I have all of them.

I now have antibiotics. I’m armed with the knowledge that lying down will make the pain worse. That part of the symptoms with this is that it doesn’t respond to pain medicine, so I won’t bother trying. And, that the antibiotics will have no affect the flu portion of the illness, but in a couple of days my head won’t hurt.

The important thing is that I don’t have to have a root canal. On the whole, that alone makes it a good day.

Gmail has this wonderful feature which shows the first line of an email next to the subject line. This evening I was checking my email and saw something from CICADA (a highly prestigious, professional magazine) which said:

Dear Ms. Kowal: I’m drafting an acceptance letter for “This Little Pig” and w

In a state of excitement I clicked on it to see what came after the “w” but gmail gave me an error message and said it couldn’t perform that function and to try again in a few seconds. I did. It gave me the same error message. By this point I am about ready to gnaw on the keyboard, but still can’t see more than that tantalizing first line. I wait.

I refresh.

I wait some more.

Finally, I realize that there’s a chance that the email went to my Other Hand Productions email address, which forwards to gmail, so I go to that mail box. Behold! There is the email.

Dear Ms. Kowal:

I’m drafting an acceptance letter for “This Little Pig” and want to verify your address. Your ms shows Portland, Oregon, while your SASE has Chattanooga, Tennessee. Which one is your current mailing address?

I’ll look forward to hearing from you!

Sincerely,

Deborah Vetter
Executive Editor, CRICKET and CICADA

While this isn’t an actual official acceptance, it’s close enough for me to do all kinds of happy dances. I told her that both addresses forward to Reykjavik.

Cicada.

I can’t believe it.

My story, Rampion, is up at the First Line, if you’d care to take a listen.

I tried to email the recording of Rampion to The First Line today, but the file was too big to send via email so I uploaded it to our website. Which means that if anyone wants to listen to the uncompressed version you can. I’m assuming that TFL will crunch it some to make it easier to download, since at 9MB it’s fairly hefty.

I’ll let you know when it’s up on their website.

Meanwhile, Rob and I went to Tektronix today for the first time in ages. It was great to get out and do some of the things we used to do when we were courting.

Rob and I finally went into the studio today to record Rampion for the First Line. It’s the first day in ages that we’ve both had the time and energy to set aside for it. Initially, I had thought I might do a multi-voice recording with sound effects, but I realized that the first line of dialogue was a little more than halfway through. I thought it would be jarring to suddenly have another actor appear, so it’s all just me.

I’ll post the link to the website when it’s up.

I recognize this as a silly thing, but the First Line has updated the list of writers and my name is now on it.

This is a submission for the magazine The First Line. I am required to use the first line they provide, but everything else is up for grabs. Let me know if you’d like to read the rest.

Rampion

&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp As the warrior guided his horse back home, she pondered what the future might hold. Sybille had plotted his seduction from the moment he arrived in their village, and now that he rode away, she had a deep longing to call him back. But she did not know his name.
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp Sybille brushed a strand of her golden hair, still sweat-damp, back from her face. Her hand traced a path down her face to her belly, resting above her womb. Would life quicken there?
&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp&nbsp She turned and went back into the tiny cottage she shared with her husband, Hans. If the warrior chanced to look back, she did not want to be standing in the doorway watching like a girl at a barn dance.