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 (just the) "Dry Frugal with Death Rays" Entries "Dry Frugal with Death Rays," now at Futurismic August 5, 2008 My story Dry Frugal with Death Rays is live as this month's featured fiction at Futurismic! It's an absurdist (or at least absurd-ish) SF office romp loosely inspired by (a) a Bruce Jay Friedman short story called "The Punch" and (b) Joseph Heller's Catch 22.  This is my first story written post-Clarion to see print and my third submission to Futurismic. And, while not an SFWA-qualifying sale, I _believe_ this puts me at one sale away from Writers of the Future ineligibility. Thanks to Jen, James Maxey, Abigail Ferrance-Wu, Jud Nirenberg, and Bill Ferris for giving the story a critique last year. Couldn't have sold it without ya.
 SALE! - "Dry Frugal with Death Rays" to Futurismic July 3, 2008 "Dry Frugal" is an oddball science fiction story, about 6500 words. Think "The Office" meets Catch-22 meets Alex as a poor substitute for Vonnegut (so lower those expectations, cool?). Futurismic is a popular futurism blog which publishes science/tech articles and tidbits, plus monthly fiction of the near-future and/or gonzo-satirical variety. This was my third sub to them. I'll talk more about the story when it appears online, possibly as early as next month. But I'm extra proud, for two reasons. First, it's one of my rare successes with humor. Most of what I've been placing are barely-successful attempts at "more serious" things I have less interest in. But as I'm developing my "voice," stories like this one--which tries to touch on the human condition in sometimes light-hearted, sometimes dark-hearted ways--are the sweet spot. The more stories like this one I place, the better I feel that my published work is representing me properly, even at this early stage of my fumbling through the writing jungles. And then there's the length. A problem when sending my Clarion application back in January 2006 was how far back in my repertoire I had to go to find a story that was between "ten and twenty-five pages." I tended to write flash fiction (too short) and novelettes (too long). I was lucky what I found to send in even qualified as stories. I've been working on normal-length stories since, and I'd view a few of them as among my best work to date. This is the first of them to find a home. Besides my novelette "Outgoing," this is my longest story sale by half. Next longest, at 2800 words, was my most recent sale "Harp" a month or so ago. Here's hoping good news comes in threes. Or tens. Tens work, too.
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Alex Wilson writes fiction and comics in Carrboro, NC. His work has appeared/will appear in Asimov's Science Fiction, The Rambler, LCRW, Weird Tales, The Florida Review, Futurismic, ChiZine, Pif, and Dragon. Locus Magazine has called him a "promising new writer," and Publishers Weekly also has nice things to say. Alex runs the audiobook project/podcast Telltale Weekly and the writer wiki Guidevines. He publishes the minicomic/zine Inconsequential Art. He is a 2006 Clarion graduate. Blog Archives 2008 - Clever Label TBA 2007 - BadYearNoCookie 2006 - Clarion! 1st Pro Sale! 2005 - Peers and Peerless 2004 - Telltale Launch 2003 - Dog bites, acting out 2002 - In my mind, I'm going... 2001 - Marriage, Macs, 1st Cons 2000 - Setback, Milestones 1999 - Engaged, Graduated 1998 - Creative Independence    Powered by MT 3.35 MySpace Profile Technorati Profile |
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