The London Science Museum's Difference Engine Replica, from brassgoggles.co.uk
I remember the day I sold my first short story. Baby Anne was about six weeks old, and my mother was visiting. I had mostly recuperated from the C-section but was deep in the sleep-deprived haze that every mother of a newborn experiences--a haze that only deepens if that mother has other young children to tend and nurture.
I checked my email while nursing my baby that afternoon and nearly jumped off the bed with surprise. SteamPod had accepted my steampunk animal fable "Dodmen and the Holophusikon" for publication as a read-aloud podcast! I dispatched my signed contract and received my payment. It wasn't large, but it seemed huge to me--a sign of publishing success to come, I dearly hoped. It had been years since I had received my last royalty check for Shannon's Mirror, and it felt good to be a paid writer once again.
A few weeks later, the podcast was released. I was thrilled that the "Dodmen" podcast was right next to a story by the great Paul DiFilippo--one degree of (virtual) separation!
Time went by. I had two other short stories published and eventually got back into working on my longer fiction once my brain returned to me.
Recently, I was checking the links on my "Published Work" page and found that the link to that podcast was broken. I tracked down Chris Moody, the editor, and asked what had happened.
He answered, telling me that they had had a server disaster and had lost all of the original posts, but that they were hoping to reconstruct the archives. He said he still had the mp3 file of the reading of my story, and asked whether he could re-post it along with a short interview with me about how I came to write it.
Um, yes? It was like Christmas all over again. I did the interview via phone, and badda-bing, badda-boom: it's now up, along with the story. Aren't you burning to know who Dodmen is, and what the heck he's doing with that Holophusikon? Now's your chance to find out! Let me know what you think.