The story "The Headline Trick" was published in a small journal called Rabid Transit in 2003. I wrote the story specifically for the chapbook in a fit of what I thought was generosity. Rabid Transit only paid $20 for a story and I was still mired in the thought of getting paid real money for my fiction every time, but I liked the Ratbastards (a group of four excellent writers named Deniro, Barzak, Anderson, and Livdahl) and I hadn't finished anything for awhile, so I buckled down and wrote and wrote and turned in the story about a month late. I remember telling my boss about the sale when word came that they'd accepted the story.

"I sold another story," I said.
"Yeah. To what publication?"
"Ahhhh...to a little 'zine thing. It's called Rabid Transit."
"Oh. I'm sorry."

But I was wrong and my boss was wrong (about a lot more than just Rabid Transit) and this little chapbook got a lot of attention, and "The Headline Trick" got good notices in Locus and elsewhere. Eventually the story was even translated into Japanese for a publication called Hayakawa's SF.

So...uh...the moral of the story is always be generous with your writing. Right?