Glenn Hackney
Excerpt
Kellin first noticed the space aliens on the shelf beside the canned chili in the Safeway three blocks from her apartment. The plain white cans displayed the universal space alien symbol above the block-lettered words SPACE ALIEN, in English and in Spanish.
"Jan," she said, unable to look away from the rows of sharp-chinned, triangular faces with their slanting, almond-shaped eyes. "What's this?"
"Space aliens, what does it look like? Is this the chili you wanted?"
Bio
Raised in the Late Cretaceous by tyrannosaurs. Discovered mainframe computers only a millenium or two before they were destroyed by the comet. Evolved wings and feathers and adapted to microcomputers. Went to work for Microsoft. Attended Clarion West Writers Workshop in 1995, an experience best described by the Gary Larson cartoon of a dog successfully dodging through dense traffic to join the other dogs, one of whom shouts "Yay! Rusty's in the club!" Went back to work for Microsoft.
Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, I wrote poetry in high school and almost died when my well-meaning English teacher made me read it to the class. As a math and physics major in college, I sent a story to Analog and got a very nice rejection letter. I also plotted a multivolume fantasy series and a multivolume science fiction series, both as yet unwritten.
Can these two realities be reconciled?
Publications
There are some scattered nuggets of wisdom in the .NET Framework Class Libraries at MSDN Online. As far as I know, all the dinosaurs that appear there are mine. (Google or Bing generic mamenchisaurus--just the two words, no quotes--and the top two hits are mine. Dry stuff, but it pays for the Science News subscription.)
Writing Description
Last year I said "scarce," but if you include the (ahem) professional publications, there's actually quite a lot of it. More's the pity.
Goals
Last year I vowed to start at least one story a week and to write for at least half an hour before I started work each day. Six weeks of this set a pattern that lasted about six months. My goal this year is the same, with the hope that this time I will glide a little farther before stalling.
Last year I said that if I wrote at all it would be a miracle and that, granting the possibility of a miracle, it would be only a small step to someone noticing that I was writing and deciding to pledge millions to Clarion West. On the basis of last year's performance, it's no miracle; so, paraphrasing the words of Kate Schaefer, "Give all your money to Clarion West. Okay, give what's in your pockets."
Website
