Short story sale: ‘In the Halls of the Makeshift King’ to Asimov’s

So this is exciting for me. I signed a contract for my short story ‘In the Halls of the Makeshift King’ to Asimov’s Magazine.

If you’ve paid close attention on Bluesky, you’ll know that I’ve been struggling with what seems to be Long Covid since I got Covid in summer of 2022. After almost three weeks laid up in a dark room, eating cinnamon fire-hots to taste something besides metallic foil in my mouth, when Covid broke I couldn’t quite shake that malaise you get when down with the flu for a few days after.

That exhausted feeling never went away. And what they call ‘brain fog’ didn’t either. I struggled to think my way out of a wet paper bag.

Thankfully, I have an extensive notes system I use to generate new ideas. But the actual writing was tough. In the two years after I got Covid I struggled to keep up. With life. Chores. Writing. My job.

I wrote a few stories in that time, I created the opening of a new novel, but it would leave me exhausted. I would nap extra for days, exhausted by the work, after simple writing and brainstorming sessions.

Ever read Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes? It’s a book about someone with limited intellectual capacity who gets a drug to reverse it. By the time it’s in full swing, the main character becomes not just ‘normal’ but genius smart. The back half of the book is about the slow descent of the main character, told through journal entries in his voice, from genius back to minimal intellectual capacity.

That’s what the last two years felt like for me. I wrote in my journal a lot about Flowers during this time.

The four stories I’ve written in the last two years have required everything from me in terms of energy, ability, and I’ve used every technical technique and trick I have learned in 30 years of doing this to get a story done.

In short, I’ve dragged myself across the finish line via determination.

In the Halls of the Makeshift King was originally commissioned, however due to my Long Covid, even after four extensions, I was still a thousand words short by their drop dead date. I was gutted.

But I kept pushing forward on the story, as I liked it. And I finished it, revised it, and I sent it out.

At the start of my career one of the bucket list items on my career bingo sheet was to sell stories to all the ‘big three’ magazines (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog SF, and Asimov’s). I sold a short story to Analog in 2002, right at the start. Some years back I sold a story to F&SF, getting a step closer to my bingo.

After I revised ‘In the Halls…’ I decided to take a big swing and send it out to Asimov’s in the hope I could get a career bingo.

It’s been a long road due to Covid, but there are some wins along the way.

This was one.

Over the last few months I’ve been lucky enough that we found something that helps my symptoms, and the last two months have been utterly, deeply, encouraging. I’ve gotten more done in the last couple months than in the last two years.

But this story will hold a special place for me, as it is one of the hardest projects I’ve ever dragged across the finish line, fighting brain fog, exhaustion, and despair to get it finished.

It’s nice that I’m writing more, doing more, organizing more, and feeling more like myself each week.

This story, when it comes out, will be a personal victory for me. One of the few pieces I finished during my struggle with the worst of Long Covid. And it completes a milestone I had hoped to hit one day in my career.