Every author who has had a few publications has one: a shelf containing all of their works. (Every author who has had many publications may have a bookcase – I’m not there, yet.) As of the 20th anniversary of Les Pages aux Folles, this is mine:
If you’re willing to indulge me, a tour of the shelf will illuminate some aspects of my life over the past twenty years. If you’re not willing to indulge me, you may find the last couple of paragraphs, in which I discuss my – uggh! – feelings about all of this, more to your liking.
On the immediate left of the image are the fourteen collections in my self-published Alternate Reality News Service series. Twelve of the volumes are freely available on Les Pages aux Folles (without the covers, some of which are spectacular); Idiotocracy for Dummies and Advanced Idiotocracy for Dummies are omnibus volumes of previously published books with new introductory material. In case you wondering, the “Make Vesampucceri Great Again” cap that features on the covers of some of these books is real; I used to wear it to conventions (back when you could attend them in person).
To the left of the cap are copies of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine. Why do I include them on my shelf, you might wonder. (I’m going to tell you whether you wonder or not, so you may as well.) They contain reviews (quite laudatory) by Charles de Lint of the first two ARNS books; they were an important source of validation in my early SF writing career, one for which I will always be grateful.
Moving right, we come across a pile of anthologies in which I have short stories. I have been lucky to have had two dozen short stories published in anthologies I adored, starting with UnConventional and Doorways To Extra Time (both of which, sadly, are out of print). Over the last couple of years, I have had a run of stories published in some wonderful anthologies, including: Dreaming the Goddess, Shapers of Worlds II and, most recently, Brave New Girls: Chronicles of Misses and Machines. I’m not the sort of writer who wants to have the best story in weak anthologies (which, thankfully, has only happened to me once or twice); being in an anthology full of strong stories suggests my work is strong as well.
Next to that are a bunch of magazines. There are three publications in this area. The first are the seven issues of Amazing Stories magazine which I edited. The second (the ones that are taller than the rest) are copies of an Alternate Reality News Service newspaper that I developed with my Web Goddess, Gisela McKay, that I printed out and distributed for free at conventions. The final section contains magazines in which I had non-fiction published (mostly Creative Screenwriting and Reel Independence).
Continuing to move to the right, we come to the Elsewhen Press section, featuring the eight novels of mine they have published as well as Existence is Elsewhen, an anthology in which the publisher’s authors were invited to contribute. Why do I love Peter, Alison and everybody at Elsewhen? As you can see, they sent me a mug with book covers to celebrate the publication of my fifth novel with them. (As you can’t see, the mug contains buttons with the logo of the Transdimensional Authority and the Time Agency, bookmarks and other stuff that I have given away at conventions.)
Finally, to the far right (no implications; sometimes a direction is just a direction) are Amazing Selects I edited while I was with Amazing Stories. These include books by Allen Steele, John Stith and David Gerrold. It also includes No Police = Know Future, an Amazing Selects anthology in which I have a story.
That’s the tour. Be sure to stop by at the gift shop on your way out…
For authors, having a shelf full of your works is not a matter of vanity (well, not entirely, in any case); it is a reminder of where you have been. A lot of writers suffer from impostor syndrome, the feeling that they aren’t really good enough to have been published, and it’s only a matter of time before the public (and their publishers) catch up with them and their writing career comes to a screeching halt.
I don’t have that problem: I love my writing and know that there is a readership for it (however difficult finding that readership has been), and, in any case, impostor syndrome is such a cliche, and I hate living cliches. I do have a sort of, somewhat, kinda similar problem: I often feel disconnected from the reality that I am a writer. It’s a subtler, more difficult to articulate problem. As best I can figure, it is connected to my lack of affect: I don’t connect to events in my life as deeply as I probably should, as others seem to. I look at the shelf containing my work to remind myself that, yes, indeed, this is what I do.
Surely, you wouldn’t begrudge me that?