Yesterday I approved the final editorial changes to ‘Starting from Scratch’, a sci-fi/horror story of the ilk popular during the 1970s and 1980s. I came up with the 'high concept' as a teenager and then, in 2008, took it and transplanted it into a better story. It would prove to be the unluckiest story I’d ever written.
First it was accepted for the Well Told Tales podcast, where I’d sold two other pieces, but the podcast was discontinued before the story could be produced. Then it was shortlisted for an anthology of ‘creature feature’ tales but missed the final cut.
The trend continued with Horror Library, which turned it down for issue 5 but asked to hang onto it for consideration in issue 6… only issue 6 never eventuated until years later, under new ownership. Then it made it into the ‘maybe’ box at Dark Discoveries before all contact from that market ceased, despite multiple query emails.
With so many quality markets interested, I knew it had to be a pretty good story. But it never managed to get over the line. Then in 2016, eight years after it was conceived, I spotted a call for submissions to Lambda Literary’s sci-fi/horror anthology featuring deaf authors.
What qualified me to submit? When I was two years old, a case of meningitis was misdiagnosed as a stomach bug and twenty-four hours later I was in hospital fighting for my life. I survived (obviously), but the bacteria caused nerve damage in my brain and I have been almost entirely deaf in one ear ever since.
That puts me at the fortunate end of the scale, of course, and I try not to make others aware of the deficit unless it's absolutely necessary (in a crowded restaurant, for example, I have no hope of hearing someone sitting on my left).
I had other hearing issues as a child that required surgery for grommets and a skin graft on my good ear drum (due to more malpractice), all of which meant I spent short periods completely deaf. I suspect that was part of the reason I turned to books and writing with such enthusiasm.
Anyway, provided ‘Starting from Scratch’ isn’t some sort of malefic literary rune that causes bad things to happen, it should appear in Lambda’s anthology later this year (published by Handtype Press). And what’s with the image of the flea? You’ll just have to wait and find out…