I'm still surprised another story of mine was accepted at Nature. I woke up and had to read the acceptance e-mail about five times before it became clear. I'm eager to find out when my story, "Writing For the End of the World" will be published. This will be my third time appearing in Nature....
With the beginning of 2018, I took some time to determine what I wanted to accomplish this year. Since I will be attending the Futurescapes Workshop in April, I first want to be able to get a substantial amount of the manuscript I've been working on ready to be critiqued there. I'm not yet sure if it will be novella- or novel-length at this point; I am such a slow writer, I'm concentrating getting words on the page at this point. Whatever length it ends up being, I'm sure it will be the longest work I've completed. . . but I'm also having fun, and the excitement of writing something this cool keeps spurring me to finish. I hope to be able to share it with the world very soon. I also hope I'll get four new short stories finished and out for submission during the year. As for the more social aspects, apart...
As 2017 comes to an end, I've been taking account of my writing over the year. As it stands, I submitted stories 64 times over the year, which is less than last year. I've had two acceptances so far in 2017: one was a reprint, podcasted at The Overcast; the other was my second appearance in the pages of Nature. In all likelihood, these may be the only acceptances I'll see this year. However, I have resolved to not be too hard on myself on the lack of acceptances (or writing overall) this year. A death in the family, wedding plans, and welcoming my family into our house because of Hurricane Maria have all been necessary disruptions. I do have several things to look forward to in 2018: I was accepted for the Futurescapes workshop, held in April, I will be attending the Nebulas Conference in May, and I will be attending Capclave...
As mentioned earlier this week, my story, Iago v2.0 is now up at Nature. I have wanted to write something like this ever since Facebook was found to be conducting emotional contagion experiments on users. However, the moment passed, and Facebook was able to paper over or dismiss any worries about their disturbing and unethical behavior. It wasn't until I saw video of Washington University's experiments with algorithms that were able to create believable, synchronized video from audio clips that the idea for this story come to me. The political ramifications of said technology were apparent, but I wanted to delve deeper into what could be plausible. I mean, we currently allow plenty of tech companies to offer us "free" services that are nothing but platforms for more advertising penetration. That's where I got the idea that most telecom companies, if given their druthers, would just have an AI build new episodes of...
Earlier this week, I received word I would be published at Nature: Futures for the second time. I completely forgot to mention this earlier because of the flurry of activity at home. My sister and her kids have been staying with us rather than return to Puerto Rico in its current state. Between that, getting my niece enrolled in school (she had four days of 6th grade before both Irma and Maria hit the island), and a handful of other things. . . I confess this good news slipped my mind. The piece, called Iago v2.0, is scheduled to be published next week. I'll keep you posted....