Harvey, who gave the story four out of five stars, writes:

It’s tough to write a story entirely in second person and not have it come across as an unreadable gimmick, but Alex J. Kane pulls it off in this high-tech SF thriller about a female assassin laden with cyber-enhancements tracking down a murderer in order to pay off her own debts. The future-noir setting is well-realized in the confines of the short story, and overall the work is a fast and rewarding read.

The other reviewer explains:

I was very much caught off guard by the story. I really didn’t have any idea what to expect based on the title, but I definitely had not expected a second person story, but that’s what I got. Interesting choice that. The ideas are good, the pacing is good, the story overall is good, although it left me wanting more. More depth, more detail, more Tzitzi. I guess realistically being left wanting more is definitely a better thing than wanting less. I also expect that it’s something that’s totally common among people who are primarily book readers, and even more so in my case as I primarily read series. So going from stories which typically are told in hundreds of thousands to millions of words, and instead down to something that’s more appropriately counted in hundreds of words. Odds are that it’s going to leave you wanting more. Even stories that very clearly have a completed arc are likely to leave you with questions like: but what happens next?

Bottom line, I enjoyed the story and would consider reading more work by Alex J. Kane, but at this point I’m not going to go to any particular effort to seek it out.

Hey, fair enough. I’m pleased the story has gotten a reaction at all, let alone a humbling bit of praise from a writer as fine and hard-working as Ryan Harvey. I’m honored.

I can hardly call 2011 a failure…but it was a disappointment. I saw all the hard work I did in 2010, with the exception of a small press collapsing under its own weight and canning three of the books I was supposed to appear in, finally come to fruition in the form of books. These things were great. But I didn’t do the writing I’d hoped to do; what I did, I’m proud of, sure, but I could have accomplished so much more… Instead, I chose to bask in the glory of yesterdays, to dream and ponder instead of getting my hands dirty. For the most part.

So here it is, folks. My official declaration of intent for 2012. It’s modest, and extremely doable, but that’s the point. In the course of the next year, I will:

• Apply to Clarion, Clarion West, and Odyssey
• Complete and submit my current novel project, Doomster
• Write, revise, and submit 12 new finished short stories
• Continue to enter Writers of the Future every contest quarter
• Follow Heinlein’s Rules henceforth without exception
• Begin making lists of nouns, titles, concepts, and story ideas a la Bradbury’s essay “Run Fast, Stand Still, or, The Thing at the Top of the Stairs, or, New Ghosts from Old Minds,” from Zen in the Art of Writing
• Graduate college with a B.A. in English

Like most writers starting out, the first paid fiction sale was my main goal. Not word count, not long-term project completion, not mastering the craft; I wanted, first and foremost, to be published.

And in August 2010, I received an acceptance for my first story, “Night of the Widow” — not a great story, but one I was proud of at the time. It was purchased — or at least contracted for — by Bill Tucker of the Library of Horror Press. Mr. Tucker is a great guy, so far as I’ve been able to tell, and has worked hard for the Library. I went on to sell three more stories to Mr. Tucker for various Library of Horror Press anthologies, one of which was paid for and published. The other three, I just read on the publisher’s forum, have been cancelled, for financial reasons. So they’re no longer listed on my bibliography page, and will likely never see print. I’m fine with this, despite my initial disappointment.

But what troubles me, aside from my own interests in the matter, are other writers’ reactions to this small press going broke and subsequently cancelling upwards of a dozen — if not dozens — of announced themed anthologies. Each of these books was conceived as a themed collection of stories, and then an editor (to be paid on release of the anthology, like the writers — the editors have been equally wronged) would read, select, and send out contracts for chosen stories. Then a table of contents would be posted, and a vague, tentative release date such as “Spring 2011″ would be posted.

Due to financial difficulties — i.e., poor sales — the projects were simply abandoned. And writers, editors, and cover artists were left unpaid (I’m assuming — cover artists were perhaps paid on completion of their work) and unpublished — which happens all too often in this industry. I’d read the horror stories more times than I can count, and yet I always assumed nothing like this would ever happen to me.

But the writers involved are fine with this! They’re disappointed, sure, as I am — but they’ve offered up propositions such as:

• accepting a one-time advance of $5.00-$10.00 in place of the contracted 1 cent/word + contributor’s copy
• attempting to use Kickstarter as a way to fund books that have already been compiled and contracted for
• and even: paying for the publication of the books in place of accepting payment!

Are we so fucking desperate? Do we never want to have careers?

The writer is such a delicate artist, such an utterly senseless creature, that he is willing to look past simple business sense, accept no payment — which he was promised long ago, perhaps over a year ago, when the contract was signed — and be happy about it?

Involved parties have suggested that a penny per word is itself a problem, that the publisher wouldn’t be going broke if it hadn’t customarily promised writers compensation of 1 cent/word plus a contributor’s copy, and then only the editors and cover artists would need to be paid. Fuck… Aren’t these books of stories? Written by writers?

Anyway, my anger is not toward the publisher — a labor of love with a very passionate community surrounding it — and certainly not toward the editors, but toward the writers themselves, who are too stupid to recognize the seeds of exploitation, who are fully willing to forego payment of any kind, or even pay the publisher to fund the book’s release. This is not the way publishing works — it was never intended to work this way, and it shouldn’t ever work this way.

If someone is in such a big damn hurry to be published, he ought to take ten minutes to convert his document to .mobi format and throw it up on Amazon. Or put together his own pay-on-demand anthology project — and hell, don’t offer contributors any sort of compensation for their work. Maybe they won’t mind.

But dammit, writers, stop giving away your work for free. Writers get paid.

Went to pick up my copy of Chuck Palahniuk’s latest, Damned, at my favorite local indie bookshop, Stone Alley Books & Collectibles, and the very next day this infant demon followed me home. I suspect he’s just hungry — probably for my soul — so I plan on feeding him for a few months, nurturing him until he can fend for himself, and then letting him go. He has bloodshot eyes, and a temper that makes his fiery igneous-rock complexion glow. It’s only a matter of time before he catches the house on fire, I fear. And, he says, as soon as I finish reading Chuck’s new book, I have to write a novel about him. Says his handwriting’s pretty bad, and every time he tries to type his fingers melt the keys — so I can either ghostwrite his memoir, or go to Hell, he says.

I figure, what the hell? I can keep him happy, and come out the other end with a novel manuscript in-hand. Sounds okay to me. Says he wants plenty of death metal, cuddly infant demons, and scary shit to happen — not an exaggeration, according to him, but rather an apt metaphorical illustration of his life experiences.

Damned is great so far, and to my relief bears no similarity to my other beloved Satanic bible, Horns, so I’m thinking the subgenre of the demonic dark fantasy story still has plenty of life left in it. I need to get a novel or two under my belt, and science fiction seems like a big chunk of research to chew on right now, given my obligations to schoolwork, etc., so horror it is. I’m enjoying the outlining process so far.

Either Thursday as I was writing or Friday during work, I began to notice an annoying, dull pain in my upper back that has in the intervening days spread to my left pectoral. I’m 22 years old, and this is freaking me the fuck out. So I haven’t written much in the past three days — got about 200 words in today, though — and I am going to be making a trip to the doctor’s office soon. I don’t eat healthy, I’ll admit it, but I think my real problems are: poor posture due to sedentary writer’s lifestyle, desk job, etc.; caffeine addiction — I drank at least six cans of soda on Friday, when my pain was at its peak, and a cup of coffee as well; and lack of regular exercise.

I mean, hey, I walk all over a hilly college campus daily, but that’s about it. And some stairs and a walk around the park with the girlfriend and the dog a couple times a week. Friday night after a dizzy spell (brought on as I was hunched over my laptop and scaring myself half to death by Googling things like “Chest Pain and Back Pain 22 yrs old” and “Heart attack symptoms”) I took three ibuprofen (600 mgs, which some search result suggested for heartburn) and slept flat on my back.

Saturday I woke with no pain whatsoever, and that persisted until the girlfriend and I went out for a hearty meal at the good ol’ Olive Garden, where I ate my fill and drank a Diet Coke — my first soda of the day, due to the scare the night before — and things were good. Sunday and today, I went back to my bad habits and now the pain is easing back into the level of “relative nuisance,” for lack of a better metric.

Feel free to chime in and share stories of your own regarding back and chest pain (mine came first as back pain, then progressed to chest pain the following day). For the love of Cthulhu, put my mind at ease.

Overall, LitReactor has some smart ideas to try and encourage skills-based learning and community engagement for writers. It offers a well-designed system that seems easy to use, and is designed with simplicity and community at its heart.

Some will balk at the idea of having to pay to access crowd-sourced feedback, however payment for peer critique has become quite common in sites such as these; in return, users can usually expect a more moderated, and considerate feedback space. A community is only as good as its members, but the points and badges systems, borrowed from videogaming, are a great way of encouraging good behavior.

As for the classes, they can only be judged by the individual needs of their students, and the skills of the teachers, so we can’t really comment. A writing class can either be a great way to inspire better work, or an expensive distraction from it. All we can say is that the website that underpins it all seems to be solid, clear and easy to use. The launch selection of content in the Magazine also looks engaging and interesting, too.

If LitReactor gets enough of a critical mass (no pun intended), and a decent archive of useful content, then it could become a great resource for experienced and amateur writers. The big question is, will enough engaged members pay their dues and stick around, in order to make it work?

 

And my wishful guess is, artist Emmanuel Xerx Javier will likely be tapped to do the cover art again. If you haven’t checked out his work on the artwork for the first two volumes, head over to Amazon and take a peak. His work is insanely awesome.

Word also has it that Eric James Stone and David Tallerman have both sold stories to Digital Science Fiction project lead Michael Wills, so who knows? — maybe my work will appear alongside theirs. Tallerman in particular has been a big influence on me over the past year, after reading his brilliant but haunting “Jenny’s Sick” in Lightspeed.

Yep. The fabled First Pro Sale, folks: She finally arrived. I can’t tell you how good that feels, after all the work — the writing, administrative this-and-that, and waiting — that we all go through in the path toward being a published professional. And now I feel I can rightly call myself just that.

A published. Professional. Science fiction writer.

Yeah, sounds all right to me.