Gary Kloster

Sample stories are problematic.  Why?  Well, people might read them and decide I’m a hack, that’s one thing.

The other is that I’m actually trying to sell this stuff.  If I write a great story (if?), it’s getting sent off to the slush piles to work for a living.  Hopefully, it’ll send back a check, otherwise it has to slog on to the next pile.  Posting the story on the web before it’s picked up would count as publication and completely nerfs the poor things chance at getting a real job.

If I happened to have a story that made the rounds and was rejected by every market, well, I could publish that.  But its failure at selling might suggest that it has some inherent problems, and might not be the best example of my work.  And so far, nothing has made it that far down yet.  Yet.  

That’s the problem.  Here’s one work-around.  I have a piece of flash sci-fi called Neverland that I did for a contest, mostly just to see if I could write an actual story that had only 500 words.  I manage to wring something out, and it got an honorable mention, which hopefully means it’s not completely full of fail.  I trotted it out to the one pro flash market, but it bounced.  So, shazam, it becomes my gift to you, oh reader.

Mostly so that I can now say- ‘Check out my work at garykloster.com!’  And it’s true.  In a truthy sort of way.

It’s quiet, which is a rare thing.  The kids are out with the grandmas, the GW(genius wife) is hard at work, and I’m sitting all alone just listening to the hum of the furnace and the baby monitor.  Waiting for the desk.

They’re delivering it today, the big ass desk that we ordered that will be the Apple’s home, the hiding place for the office supplies (Daughter #1 has adopted the viking approach to procuring material for her art), and a place for me to write.  

Writing.  Genre writing, specifically.  Sci-Fi, fantasy, horror– the geeky stuff.  The good stuff.  Though whether my writing falls into that latter category remains to be seen, I suppose.  Why am I trying to be a writer?  Well, after a life of spent immersing myself in other people’s stories, I want to inflict my own on the public.  At least the small wedge of the public that I can manage to reach.  So for the past three years, when the children have passed out, when the house isn’t in immediate danger of being declared a haz-mat site, when I’ve had enough sleep to be almost coherent, I’ve been tapping away at a keyboard, trying to tell stories.  And then trying to sell them.

So far, some success. Two stories sold, one to the Writers of the Future Contest, one to Baen’s Universe.  Neither is out yet, so I’m only published in a theoretical sense, but that’s good enough for me right now.  So I can pretend, at least, that this might go somewhere.  Someday, I might find an agent.  Someday, I might sell Chosen Wings, my first book.  Or the second book, which still lacks a title- and a middle, and an ending (solid beginning though).  Someday I might sell a third story, and qualify as a pro writer- really!  At least according to SFWA (if I pay to join).  Someday…

Someday I might earn enough from writing to pay for the big ass desk.