It's in my hands

On my way home from work today, I stopped off at Barnes and Noble. I had put in an order a few days ago, and it finally arrived. I walked in and, after getting distracted in the movies section, headed to the counter to pick up my books.

My books.

They belong to other people too, of course. Steve Berman's name is on the covers, where it should be, because he's the one who put out the call for stories, sifted through what was probably a deluge of them, and went through the whole process of turning all our crazy ideas into a book. Richard Bowes's name is on top, followed by Pat Cadigan. There are others, including Tanith Lee,and 'AND MORE...' at the end of the list.

I'm part of that 'AND MORE.' I found my name in the table of contents, and flipped through the book to find 'Dirty.' There it is. But now I'm reading it on paper that someone else printed, in a mass of folded and glued paper, that was put together by a professional printing company. This is my book. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Be glad you're not in the room with me, because I'm discovering that I cackle whenever I look at it. Yep, cackle is the word for it.

So after I post this, I'm going to take a sheet of paper and go downstairs to watch 'Suspiria.' It's what distracted me as I walked in the store, and while I watch it, I'll keep rewriting the last scene in 'In The Dark.' I expect to be cackling while I do it.

That book contains my writing.

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.