Shorter Work

The mail brought my copy of Locus, which I seem to get later than anyone I know. (Do they mail them in alphabetical order, I wonder?) This issue contains no less than two favorable reviews of my story in Alien Crimes, a new anthology available from the SFBC. My advice is to buy it before the SFBC is canceled, along with its editor.

I also received my contributor’s copy of The New Space Opera, with my story “Send Them Flowers.” This story got a favorable review in the last-Locus-but-one, which referred to the story as a “jape.” When I workshopped the story last year, the adjective most used was “romp.”

I am often happy to write romps, or even japes, but that wasn’t what I intended with this story. Nothing funny actually occurs in the narrative. There are no jokes. There is a suicide attempt, some crime in which the narrator is implicated, serial infidelity, some (offstage) deaths, and a rather sordid bordello scene. I intended a rueful semi-tragedy, with blackly amusing asides.

I have clearly miscalculated with this story, but how?

Please read it and let me know.