(no subject)

My short story "Happy Hour at the Tooth and Claw" will be in Clockwork Phoenix 4.

I HAVE ALL THE FEELS.

So, you may remember that time_shark had a Kickstarter for CP4, and that his $10K goal, which he made, was that he'd start a new magazine. He hit the goal and we all got a little ridiculous on Twitter.

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Me: Hey @mythicdelirium when do submissions open for your BRAND NEW MAGAZINE because I have a thing about a vampire& a werewolf who fall in love

rose_lemberg: vampire and werewolf fall in love with a DEMON. And a witch. It is poly.

Me: ALSO THERE ARE ANGELS AND SELKIES. And everyone is noncreatively pseudokinky. PUBLISH ME.

time_shark: oh do you now? (patience grasshopper)

Me: Ha! No. No, I do not.

time_shark: I'm curious if someone could write a story like that I'd actually buy. [NO that is NOT a challenge...]

Me: ...damn you. *chases plotbunny*
*******

I did not chase the plotbunny at that time. At that time, I was going wild on Twitter to distract myself from the fact that our cat was dying and my grandmother was having the same symptoms as the cat. Besides, I had a totally different idea for my CP4 submission, something that would really bend storytelling in weird ways...

...something that I just couldn't get started on. I needed to do research for it, et cetera. In the meantime, life was collapsing in on me and I kept getting little story-sparks for this thing. Could I write a story like that that Mike would buy? Doesn't matter, I have five other things to do first. But what if - NO, brain, stop it, that is last in the queue!

But in the middle of the hell time, I sat down and wrote it anyway.

My characters have ridiculous names. I crisscross like 5 different genres. I hoped the story wouldn't get rejected on formatting alone, because I Did Things. But fuckit, I wasn't writing to make it pretty and publishable. I was in the center of the whirlwind and it was my damn rope. And it didn't matter if anyone else liked it, because dammit, it made me laugh when I didn't think I could. And whenever I had time, whenever I wasn't medicating the cat or flying to Florida, I would sit and say "it's okay if you only do a hundred words today, but you have to do a hundred words." No drowning allowed. I was writing with a strict set of guidelines because that's what I needed, but I had no idea if it would work for anyone but me, and I didn't need it to. I needed to be ludicrous and break all the boxes and build something new.

So I wrote it.

I sent it to Adam and he said it was my best story yet and y'know, I think I agree. It's my longest. It is not grimdark. There are parts that make you laugh and parts that make you go oooh and sometimes those are the same parts.

So I sent it to Mike. And he bought it, this story about a vampire and a werewolf in LOVE and there's a witch and an angel and an alien stripper and there are zero straight people in it and two genderfluid characters and a new drink and karaoke and discredited scientific theories.

And it all starts when a vampire and a werewolf walk into a bar.

(The witch is already in the bar.)

You should buy Clockwork Phoenix 4 is what I am saying, I guess. And Mike, thanks for the challenge. :)