Alex Wilson

"Dry Frugal" is an oddball science fiction story, about 6500 words. Think "The Office" meets Catch-22 meets Alex as a poor substitute for Vonnegut (so lower those expectations, cool?). Futurismic is a popular futurism blog which publishes science/tech articles and tidbits, plus monthly fiction of the near-future and/or gonzo-satirical variety. This was my third sub to them. I'll talk more about the story when it appears online, possibly as early as next month.


But I'm extra proud, for two reasons. First, it's one of my rare successes with humor. Most of what I've been placing are barely-successful attempts at "more serious" things I have less interest in. But as I'm developing my "voice," stories like this one--which tries to touch on the human condition in sometimes light-hearted, sometimes dark-hearted ways--are the sweet spot.

The more stories like this one I place, the better I feel that my published work is representing me properly, even at this early stage of my fumbling through the writing jungles.

And then there's the length. A problem when sending my Clarion application back in January 2006 was how far back in my repertoire I had to go to find a story that was between "ten and twenty-five pages." I tended to write flash fiction (too short) and novelettes (too long). I was lucky what I found to send in even qualified as stories.

I've been working on normal-length stories since, and I'd view a few of them as among my best work to date. This is the first of them to find a home. Besides my novelette "Outgoing," this is my longest story sale by half. Next longest, at 2800 words, was my most recent sale "Harp" a month or so ago.

Here's hoping good news comes in threes. Or tens. Tens work, too.