I’ve submitted a new story to an anthology titled Mirror, Mirror. It’s fully produced — from beginning concept to final publication — by Kevin J. Anderson and his class of graduate students at Western Colorado University. A recent post stated they received 618 submissions, and can accept 15-20 of those. Dammit, Jim. I’m a writer, not a mathematician, but even I can calculate those odds. But writing the story with this goal in mind, hiring an editor for it, making the edits, formatting the manuscript, and submitting it on time were all excellent practice. I’m glad for the experience points.
This new story was written specifically for the anthology. I based it off a hot idea I had rattling around in my brain, and it underwent several mental revisions before I put down a single word. I liked the first draft quite a lot, and offered a friend a sneak peak. As is typical, the very action of hitting Send on that email offended my muse and she screamed a thousand ways to improve it while I frantically made edits, even as my friend was reading the mostly useless first draft.
I changed it. A lot. And I’m pretty happy with the final result, but 15:618? Up against grad students and professional writers and people who do this full time? Well, to paraphrase Lloyd Christmas, “So, you’re telling me there’s a chance…?”
