a sale, and a shoot

Chris Fletcher, editor of M-Brane SF, informed me yesterday that he wanted to buy my near-future sf short story “The Secret Names of Buildings”. So I said yes! It will appear in issue 12, which is being guest edited by Rick Novy.

Again, this is a story I wrote at Clarion West. It was during week six, my last week at the workshop, and we were being mentored by sf legend Vernor Vinge. Vernor is a hard sf writer, so I wrote something I thought might benefit from his expertise. Vernor, by the way, was very generous with his time, and enjoyed geeking out with us – all his conferences ran over.

I got a call yesterday evening from Conor, the director of my script, who asked if I could re-write the opening scene. The first scene was set in a car, so I had anticipated it might need to go because of the tight shooting schedule. So, I modified it, and it allowed me the opportunity to polish the draft, and tighten the ending.

I’m travelling to Dublin this afternoon, and the shoot is tomorrow. I hope to take photos, and notes. I’ve no idea if I’ll get an opportunity to be involved during editing, but would be surprised if that’s the case. Once the shoot begins a lot of my work will be over, and how my script is finally realised will depend on many other people. Mainly, on the day I hope to contribute some miracle last fixes depending on what happens.

I’m looking forward to seeing “my” characters being played by the actors. That will be a new – and hopefully good – experience.