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eBook Category: Science Fiction Nebula Award(R) Finalist
eBook Description: An editor discovers a masterpiece to rival War and Peace in his slush pile. But it comes from an unlikely source. Included also in the McDevitt collection, Outbound, published by ISFiC.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Subterranean #2, 2005
Fictionwise Release Date: February 2007

399 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [25 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [31 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [11 KB] , Portable Document Format (PDF) [160 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [11 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [73 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [82 KB] , hiebook (KML) [57 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [38 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [9 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [12 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [40 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [22 KB]
Words: 3237
Reading time: 9-12 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

It came in over the transom, like a couple hundred other manuscripts each week, memoirs of people nobody ever heard of, novels that start with weather reports and introduce thirty characters in the first two pages, massive collections of unreadable poetry from someone's grandmother.

They all go into a stack for the screeners, who look through them, attach our form rejection, and send them back.

Actually there's only one screener. Her name is Myra Crispee. She has one green eye and one blue eye, and a talent for going through the slush pile. She picks out the occasional possibility and gets rid of the rest. Every day. Love my job, she says. When I ask her why, she says it's because I pay her the big bucks.

Tempus Publishing isn't a major oufit, but we do okay. We don't specialize. Tempus will publish anything that looks as if it'll make money. But most of the manuscripts we see have already made the rounds at Random House, HarperCollins, and the other biggies. Some come in from an agent, but that has no effect on the way we treat them. Unless we know the author, they all go into the pile.

Sometimes we get lucky. We published a couple of self-help books last year that did extremely well, and a novel about Noah's ark that became a runaway bestseller.

Anyhow, the day it arrived was cold and wet. The heating system had gone down again so I was wrapped in a sweater. I'd just opened the office and had turned on the coffee when Myra came in, carrying an umbrella and a manuscript. That was unusual. She doesn't usually take these things home. "Hey, Jerry," she said, "I think we've got a winner."