I find myself in the happy—and happily unexpected—situation in which FOUR new stories of mine are in the publication pipeline! They are slated to become available to readers later this year or early next year. Three of these will be in anthologies. Disclaimer: As many writers have learned, events might well conspire against one or more of these scenarios. The four stories are in addition to my regular book review columns for Analog and a science article for that venerable periodical.
But back to the dinosaurs: You will get to read about full-sized stegosaurs (yowza!) and allosauruses (yikes!) as well as miniaturized T. rexes, ceratopsians and brontosaurs.
Why are all these tales slated to appear around the same time? Publication schedules are not under my control. Nor is the length of time it takes to find the right market for a given story. Naturally, one might suppose a writer can control how long it takes to write, edit, and polish a story. And yet, even that can be a surprise, at least for me. I worked on a couple of these pieces off and on for five or six years before they finally gelled. Happily, the other two came together in just a few weeks. The other unknown variable can be the amount of time between when a story is sent off and when it is bought and then when it is published. For example, I’ve had editors buy stories within four hours of receiving them (a rarity I treasure) or after having it in their queue for over five months. Publishers, too, are not always in control of various aspects of the process, such as paper shortages.
These factors make it nearly impossible for me to predict when my latest fiction will fall into your hands, dear readers. Suffice to say, there will be a fair bit of it. Meanwhile, I’m writing a fresh batch of new ones I sure hope will come your way ASAP.