In May 2005, I sent my first story to Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. The slush readers had mixed reactions to ‘The Beauty Without’, a controversial piece which made it to the second round of reading before it was ultimately rejected. As an unpublished writer at the time, I was delighted to have my story get that far. Andromeda had made a point of being a ‘pulpy’ speculative fiction magazine and I thought my writing was a good fit for it.
I wasn’t wrong. In the ensuing nine years, I had more than half a dozen stories reach the final ‘shortlist’ round, only to miss the final cut every time. Many of those stories found homes elsewhere, which was nice, but I felt an affinity with ASIM – not least because it was Australian – and I wanted to appear in its pages.
In recent weeks, I had fallen into a funk. I had begun to wonder why I bothered writing fiction, since it offered so little reward for so much effort (or “so much flapping and so little flying”, as Robert Skinner said). It probably happens to all but the A-list writers. Not much else was working for, either; a job I had enjoyed for many years had become dull, and my 12-month-old daughter, who had been a good sleeper for much of her little life, had grown ill and was keeping my wife and I up half the night, every night.
Then, one evening, the phone in my pocket vibrated. I pulled it out, expecting a text message or a Twitter alert, and discovered it was an email. The team at Andromeda Spaceways had decided they would like to publish my story ‘Teething Problems’ in issue #63 of the magazine.
The last time an acceptance gave me such an uprush of happiness was when I sold my first story – which just happened to be ‘The Beauty Without’. That marked the end of my existence as an unpublished writer; this sale I see as proof that I am a ‘real’ writer. ASIM might not be prestigious in the grand scheme of SF titles (it certainly doesn’t pay as much as Aurealis), but it’s a market I respect. The stories are read blind, meaning the author’s name is stripped from the manuscript and the editor accepts a story for his or her edition without knowing who wrote it. In an incestuous micro-market like Australia, that is a welcome streak of meritocracy.
I’m also chuffed because ASIM publishes the sort of fiction I like to read as well as write. Smart, but entertaining and accessible. No pretension, no nepotism. Just great fiction.
Like ‘The Beauty Without’, the acceptance of ‘Teething Problems’ arrived when I was at my lowest. Such affirmation is what keeps an author going when the whole exercise has begun to seem futile.
