In a normal person’s life, there are days when you feel pretty great about yourself and days you feel frustrated that things aren’t going to plan. There are also days when you feel grateful, humbled, and maybe a little undeserving. I’m about to tell a story about one of those kinds of days.

When you’re a relatively new author, you say yes to pretty much everything. You want me to speak at a book club? Sure! You want me to sit behind a table at Barnes and Noble for two hours while passers-by ask me for directions to the bathroom? No problem. Will you risk your life by speaking into a sparking microphone, in a leaking tent, during a torrential downpour at the Baltimore Book festival? Absolutely. Let me touch that live wire!

I always say yes, because these opportunities almost always turn into something good. So, when fellow author and lovely diva Amanda Brice invited me participate at an event at the Rockville Memorial Library the other day, I agreed without knowing any of the details. And because I lost her phone number, I couldn’t get any of those details after the fact. I didn’t know who else would be there; I didn’t know who was running the event. I just knew that I should show up with a bunch of my books. And I did.

The first thing that struck me was the extreme youth of the person who greeted me at the library as the organizer of the event. Why, she couldn’t even be out of high school! A smart young bibliophile who could also organize an author’s panel and make guests feel welcome with refreshments? I shouldn’t have been surprised. But capable young women have always fascinated me, and there one was, in the flesh, helping to escort me to my place at the table, where I immediately ran into Princess Alethea Kontis, who was wearing a pair of kick-butt boots and a tiara.

Now, I’ve been meaning to meet this dazzling New York Times bestselling author ever since she helped publicize my Cleopatra Literary Contest For Young Women. I tried to meet her at the Baltimore Book Festival too, but failed. Sure enough, I stumbled upon her by accident and was mesmerized by her innate understanding of the audience and how to charm them. She even brought a glowing ghost, which captured the attention of the youngest in the audience.

Next to join us was the poised Diana Peterfreund, who was heckled by a young (very young) critic in the audience who insisted that unicorns do not kill people.

Now, I don’t want to diminish my delight at spending time with these ladies, but hands-down, the most staggering moment for me was the arrival of Edmund R. Schubert, the editor of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. This came as a complete surprise to me and I’m afraid I stammered because as it happens, Edmund is the editor responsible for my first professional sale. He is, more than anyone outside my circle of immediate family and friends, responsible for giving me the confidence to persevere.

So, on the panel, I mentioned this and thanked him. To my surprise and delight, he immediately remembered the story he bought from me all those years ago. Limbo! And he said many kind things about it. I was astonished and totally humbled. I think I babbled on about all my current sales and contracts, sounding like an arrogant fool, but really I was simply trying to tell him how much his faith in my writing meant to me, and that I hoped he’d be proud in how far I’ve come since then.

I’m still a little humbled by the whole thing.

Thanks to the Library for a wonderful panel and engaged and enthusiastic young adult readers!

My story Limbo appeared in Issue 8 of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and the reviews are in:

“Limbo” is a warm and wonderful treat and is the highlight of this issue. — Jim Steel from The Fix

Earlier this week, Chris Cevasco, the editor of Paradox Magazine, informed me that my story, “Somewhere, Sometime on the Nile” received an honorable mention in the just-released 20th annual Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror collection (eds. Datlow, Link, Grant), which is devoted to short fiction published in 2006.

On a related note, Paradox has re-launched with a new website and I think it’s fabulous, though I’m a bit aggravated that the flash technology they used has made linking to specific issues or stories difficult to impossible.

Of all the Spec Fic magazines, Paradox is the one that I usually savor and read cover to cover. One of my Clarion classmates, Tom Doyle, has a story in issue 11 too!

I’m as attached to my work as any author, but sometimes I write something that I think is so special I market it doggedly. Limbo, a cheeky little story about coming to terms with the legacy of our ancestors, is one of my favorites. Whenever I do a reading, that’s the one I want to read. And while it got many kind letters from editors, I was getting frustrated at the rejections. Today, amidst the insanity that is my life the past few months, I got a letter from Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show:

Stephanie,

I would like to thank you for sending me this wonderful story. I’d like to use it in a future issue of IGMS (probably issue 8 or 9). I know you’ve waited for quite a while for me to sort things out, but hopefully it was worth the wait.

I’ll get back in touch with you when I know exactly when your story will be published. Contracts and payment will come from managing editor Kathleen Bellamy, usually about a week or two before the issue comes out.

We will need to do a little bit of editing (minor line edits), but I’ll run all that by you for your approval before I do anything else.

Thanks,
Edmund R. Schubert
Editor, Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show
www.InterGalacticMedicineShow.com

I’m absolutely delighted. Not just because Limbo found a home, but because IGMS is one of my favorite genre publications. I’ve been really honored in that the magazines I tend to love are the ones that love me back.

Tangent Online recently reviewed Paradox Magazine. Here were the kind words for my work:

“Somewhere, Sometime on the Nile” by Stephanie Dray is my favorite of the issue. This story, balancing between character and events, is another time travel tale. The travelers are “time slippers” who inadvertently slide through different times through a location (the Wailing Wall) or an object (an ancient vase or jar). Jerusalem in the story’s present is the center of a peaceful Middle East. This is the result of careful time adjustment by the Elders Council that located Professor Ammar Abdul-Salaam years ago and trained him after his inadvertent slide through time, following the death of his father in a Jerusalem riot. He then found and trained Maryam, a young Palestinian woman who timeslid after the violent death of her own father. The result of the time fix cost Maryam her child, who no longer exists, and now she’s out for revenge. And though the frail old professor is dying, he must stop her, or Jerusalem itself will be erased.

As the professor chases Maryam, we slide back and forth in time through the major events of the characters’ personal histories, against the backdrop of the anguish and horror of events in that region. The story is thus fraught with tension; I wondered while reading it if it was really a book compressed down, for we never know Maryam’s child, for instance, but the scenes, though short, are taut; the situation of a mother denied her child certainly is immediately understandable as a cause for conflict. And so what might well have become a vast and fascinating novel full of colorful people and dramatic events is condensed to a duel between two hurting people, which Dray brings to a very effective close.