At long last my contractual negotiations ended with the Sunday-Times U.K. Co., and after having brought them to their knees at the bargaining table, the deal is done.
They wanted to pay me Euros or some such, but I said “No way Jose!”
I held out for a free copy of the magazine, a by-line, editorial aproval and an "originally published on the Straight Dope Message Board, www.straightdope.com tag at the end of the piece.
Now the dream has become a reality. The Horror of Blimps has been published in the world’s premiere blimping magazine “Aerostat, U.K.”
Thank you everybody who’s read all the crappy shit I’ve ever wrote, and especially thank you to Ed Zotti who answered my email about how to go about doing these kinds of things, and Euty who actually thinks that my writing “works occasionally” and is “copacetic.”
I would also like to thank all the little people who made this possible, because God know where we’d all be without the Umpa Lumpas, and Munchkins.
Well, that’s another life accomplishment off the checklist.
::checks off “get published.” looks at rest of list::
you still need to have your head checked, driving around with an empty propane tank in the trunk… then the PVC fiascco.
Congrates.
sort of… now loads of more people will read the SDMB and the hamsters are going to drop to a slow crawl.
I could learn to be angry with you. Unless youf course you feel free to point a few of those super models or even the not so super models my way. Then I could better see the errors of my ways
I would like take back what I said in the “Horror of Blimps” thread. I said, “Scylla should publish his stuff properly, and leave the boards to lameasses like me,” or something like that.
I didn’t really mean it Scylla. It’s not like you would listen to a worm like me, who is groveling in the presence of a published author, but I’d really, really like to take it back.
Please keep posting your stuff here so we can read it. I’ll file my copies in the “sheep, woodchucks, and Mandingo Amish” folder in my home cabinet.
Well, I just sent off an email to the magazine editor, asking if there was any way someone on this side of the pond could buy a copy of the magazine. If I hear back from Ms. Liz Meek, I’ll let you know.
Congratulations Scylla. I’ll have you know, whenever I want to show new people what the boards are like, I always dig up some of your work, as I find most of it to be funny, thoughtful, and well written.
Sure, those millions of monthly subscribers to a Blimp Magazine are going to just destroy the hamsters.
No offense, Scylla, and congrats. Maybe market your stories about Amish and groundhogs to the Farmers Almanac. Although they might not get the humor aspect.
Have a goal. Set your sights. Live through the nerves of rejection. Live through the utter paranoia that only you will get you and everyone else will go *huh? * and that your writing is complete and total drivel. Realize a dream has come true.
