I am going to be published

I got the e-mail last Monday. Actually I got one before that, asking for a bio. That set a nerve in the center of my brain twitching and made all the tiny bones inside my ear canal vibrate. But I didn't want to say anything in case things fell through. It's on.

It still doesn't feel real. I've seen the table of contents for the book, and my name is right there alongside some pretty distinguished company. But some unhelpful voice in my head keeps whispering, “That doesn't mean anything. It's just some words typed into a file and then that file was posted. What if you go around claiming you're going to be in this book, and then Godzilla wades ashore and destroys the city where the publisher lives? You're going to look pretty silly, aren't you?”

What, the voices in your head are logical?

Part of this lurking dread comes from a decision I made a while back. I didn't want to be one of those people who go around claiming to be a writer when in reality they hardly ever put words on a page, or who blogs endlessly and expects that to count. When 'I am a writer' is a functional reality, I will write more often than I don't, and send those words off to a publisher. Those publishers will send money back, and I will spend that money. I don't plan to quit my job just yet, but if I can make enough money throwing nightmares and daydreams at people, I'm not going to keep moving boxes and wire in a warehouse where it gets to be a hundred degrees during the summer. I've introduced myself as 'a writer with a day job' once or twice, but that's a placeholder. If I were to smile at someone and say, 'Hi. I'm Stephen Pope, and I work a forty-hour week at a regular job and then come home and alternate between pounding on a word file and walking around muttering to myself,' I might be a bit more honest, but I'm going to get even more funny looks from the people around me than I do now.

The anthology is called Handsome Devil: Tales of Sin and Seduction, and it's due out in January from Prime Books. My piece, Dirty, involves a young girl coming of age while living in a Civil War-era house who hates the new boarder that her mom has taken up with. If you think you can guess where the story goes, I would say you might be on track. But this track is longer and more twisted than you can expect, even if you've been around a few tracks before.

In a way, it's probably a good thing that this doesn't feel real yet, a very good thing. Every time I think about it and make myself believe that it's actually happening I start giggling like Jack Nicholson's version of the joker. I creep people out enough as it is.

I'm not going to stop writing.