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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: In this humorous satirical story about writers and publishers, literary agents suddenly discover that they are getting offers for rights to the works of obscure writers from editors in alternate worlds. James Morrow says about the author: "Pamela Sargent brings consummate skill and deft coloring to every instrument in the speculative-fiction orchestra ... she is one of our field's true virtuosos."

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Amazing Stories, 1994
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2003

44 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [93 KB], eReader (PDB) [36 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [24 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [22 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [72 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [93 KB], hiebook (KML) [82 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [53 KB], iSilo (PDB) [20 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [25 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [53 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [36 KB]
Words: 7051
Reading time: 20-28 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Darcy Langton dreaded her daily journey to the post office. She knew only too well what her mailbox would yield--bills she could not pay, along with more rejections.

Lately, no one wanted to buy her stories; she wondered why editors kept encouraging her to submit them. Maybe they just wanted to keep her on tap in case the hot new writers they were buying now either priced themselves out of the market or self-destructed. Maybe they just wanted to pretend they were good guys after all, sensitive caretakers of writing talent instead of stripminers and exploiters of it. Maybe it was part of a vast conspiracy, in which editors regularly got together and cackled about all the suckers to whom they were giving false encouragement. Maybe--

Going to the post office often provoked such musings. Darcy's agent would have told her that it was simply a matter of too many stories chasing too few markets. Agents were supposed to think that way, and Leonard McDermott Lowell was more hardheaded than most, which was one of the reasons she had asked him to represent her work ten years ago. Still, he hadn't been doing much for her lately. Maybe he was too busy hyping his hot new clients to publishers to tend to her paltry business affairs.

Her post office box was empty, except for a suspiciously thin envelope from Leonard McDermott Lowell & Associates. Darcy clenched her teeth, suspecting it was a letter telling her that Canyon Books had rejected her proposal for a new novel. She locked her box, crossed the room, and leaned against a table as she prepared to read of her doom. Disaster it would be, after six months of waiting to hear from an editor who had encouraged the submission only to lapse into a lengthy silence. Darcy would have to go back to her old job at Burns and Royal to make ends meet, assuming the bookstore still had an opening. Leonard might at least have called to tell her about the rejection, and to commiserate with her, instead of heartlessly notifying her in a letter.

She tore open the envelope. A statement from her agent fell out, along with a check. She stared at the check for a long time, not daring to believe it. Twenty thousand dollars for a new edition of her first novel, The Silent Shriek, and this was apparently only the first part of the advance. Leonard's statement revealed that more would be forthcoming on publication, six months from now.