I don't remember a time when we didn't have copies of Asimov's in the house. My mom was a subscriber, and some of my earliest memories of science fiction involve reading those digests, sitting on the floor at the foot of a bookcase. I first encountered Kim Stanley Robinson, Lisa Goldstein, and Neal Barrett, Jr. in the pages of Asimov's. In college, I found a corner of the local thrift store that had literally scores of old issues of Asimov's on sale for a dime apiece, and since I was broke and hungry for reading material, I bought them by the armload. Once I started writing stories, I sent them to Asimov's, of course. (I've been submitting stories there fairly consistently for, oh, about eight years now.) A few years ago they started accepting my poetry, and I've sold them a handful of poems since, but that wasn't quite what I was looking for -- I wanted to sell them a story. I've gotten a few personal, encouraging rejections from Gardner Dozois these past couple of years, but no sales.

From my childhood, I had the idea that real SF writers published stories in Asimov's. I have since grown a bit more sophisticated in my worldview -- plenty of great SF writers never publish in Asimov's -- but selling a story to the magazine has still been one of my major goals. It's not about the money, obviously, and it's not even exactly about the prestige... it's more about taking a place in the pantheon of my own childhood, if that makes any sense.

Today I got a letter from Gardner Dozois. It says: "Thanks for letting me see 'Bottom Feeding.' I like this -- any story with a character named Shiteater in it can't be all bad -- and I'll take it.'"

I danced around the apartment. I read it twice to make sure I hadn't read it wrong.

So, yeah. I did it. One of my major goals, and I just hit it. I'm elated. Asimov's is going to publish my weird-ass Southern fantasy about catfish, death, memories, and wisdom. Asimov's. Holy crap, y'all. Asimov's.

I will do an entry about the reading (it went well), complete with pictures and so on, sometime in the next day or two.