DEBRIEF: IN SEARCH OF STARS (GLITTERSHIP)

In Search of Stars:
By day a man works on the formula for a paint that create flight, and by night waits outside a secret door that leads to a place he doesn't dare visit.

Publication date: August 2017

Completion date: December 2015

Number of times subbed: 8

Placing the story: Good god but this story wasn't half a thorn in my side. This was the story that plagued my nightmares for most of 2016 because it kept coming so, so close to publication. It was rejected seven times, but over the course of those seven rejections I had glowing personal feedback from editors, I had notifications of making it through four rounds of consideration, and ran all the way to the very end of several venues' submission periods. And then it would never quite make it. Normally I'd probably trunk a story about our or five submissions, but this time I was really proud of the story... and eventually determination won out, and the story was accepted by GlitterShip, which I was very excited about because I *love* GlitterShip and the stories they put out.

The story of the story: After I published my Dorian Gray story in Queers Destroy Horror, my publisher at Lethe (probably fairly flippantly) suggested I write a full collection of queered Victorian characters, removing them from their timeframe as I did with Dorian. I liked the idea, and began to formulate concepts, scouring every corner of the Victorian fantastic I could find. 'In Search of Stars' was the first of these stories I completed, though it takes an almost absurdly obscure character (he appears in one story which is a cheap knock-off of Henry Cavor and his adventures) but there was something that caught me about one particular detail, the invention of a paint that nullifies gravity. It immediately conjured an image, of a man floating, naked, out of a bedroom window and up into the sky. And that was all I had, so I wrote a 2000 word piece of flash fiction, a vignette that caught the atmosphere of what I'd imagined and not much else and transposed my Victorian character into the seedy edges of mid-century silver-screen glamour. My publisher sent it back and said 'carry on'. I replied, saying, 'But that's the whole story', and he sent me the same email back again. And so I did, and built a story from that image... and then revised and revised (and revised again, the most exacting editorial process I've ever been through on a story) until I had 'In Search of Stars'.

'In Search of Stars 'is currently available in Glittership Summer 2017 here.

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This format is shamelessly stolen from the excellent B.R. Sanders, who's been posting these about their own short fiction. (Seriously, I've even stolen the title.) Partly this serves as a shameless announcement (Hey you! Go read my story!), partly a record of my writing along side the record of reading that this blog exists as. But I also think that writers don't always talk about the industry as much as they should, and I find it fascinating to read about when other writers so perhaps someone will enjoy it in return. (It sure helps when you receive your 27th rejection note to be able to read of other stories that have met the same fate.)