Cover Boy

So when you are a writer, you dream.

You dream up your stories. You dream up your characters. You dream up the pretty girls who will flock to your side when they read your brilliant prose.

You dream of being published. That’s a dream not three in a dozen writers ever realize. Even fewer end up in a high class, national magazine.

And you dream of being the cover story. The story that’s so good, the editor thinks it will attract readers like flies on, uh, sugar. That’s it, sugar.

In my long, long writing journey (I began at 10 and, at 66, am still working on getting better), I’ve seen some of my little dreams come true.

When I wrote poetry, I wanted to end up in Rattle, a great new poetry journal. Lo and behold, I ended up in there four times.

When I started writing mystery stories, I wanted to get published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. It is the longest-running mystery story magazine in the United States, and the absolute hardest to get into.

I tried everything. I tried their 100-word stories attached to a picture. I never made it but once or twice I got a nice note from the editor telling me I was, oh so close.

Then, as regular readers of this blog know, Minerva James sailed into my life. I won the Black Orchid Novella Award, which meant I got published in AHMM. I foolishly hoped my story would make the cover. Something else did, but I was happy to be in AHMM.

I published a second story in AHMM, which told me that the first one was not a fluke. Indeed, during a talk on publishing short stories, the editor of AHMM, Linda Landigren, said that Minerva was one of the most original detectives she’d seen in a long time.

My third AHMM story is coming out this month. The same month I am going to appear on a panel at the California Crime Writing Seminar. In getting my bio for the program, one of the organizers casually mentioned that isn’t it cool that I’m on the cover of AHMM this month.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Yes, my friends, as you can see by the picture above, my story has been chosen as this month’s cover story.

The first thing I think is that, now those damned agents and publishers will notice me.

But you know what? That’s foolish expectations.

The cool thing is, I made the cover. Like that song by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show all those years ago, There’s no thrill that’ll getcha when you get your picha on the cover…

Or at least your story.

And you know what? I’m going to savor this. No expectations. No wondering if something else will come up.

My story made the cover.

Ain’t that forever cool?