So, I'm not sure how many of you are aware that not only am I a struggling artist, but I'm a struggling writer as well! (I was also a struggling actor for many years -- but that's another sad story.)

I'm constantly writing short stories, poems and wrestling with a novel that I keep saying I'm going to have finished by my birthday... one of my birthdays, anyway. I send out the short stories and poems, and a few weeks later I get a rejection letter. Sometimes, I get a very nice rejection letter with a personal note saying, "Thanks for writing, this isn't for us, you'e a good writer, send us something else sometime." Most of the time, it's just a form letter, "We receive many thousands of submissions and yours is just one of the ridiculously hopeful... We aren't publishing you, forget it."

BUT, every now and then, you hit the right editor, competition, storyline and hooray! You're accepted. Such was the case with the John Reid/Tom Howard short story submission competition thing I entered ages and ages ago. Whoo hoo! Money and publication in an anthology! Received the check. Cashed the check (promptly went out and bought art supplies!). And waited for my copy of the anthology.

And waited. And waited. And waited.

I'm impatient. I know that. But 18 months go by and no book. I'd think it was a rip-off except for the fact that they paid me! And, as my friend Dan Kimmel , film critic, author of The Dream Team and other books, and short story writer himself, says: it's all good as long as "the check cleared!" Still, I kept telling people that I was going to have a short story published... and I was starting to get skeptical looks.

At the Arisia convention in Boston last January, I was having a drink (or two) in the hotel bar with MaryAnn and author Steve Sawicki, a man who knows anthologies, having recently had a short story published in one called "Future Washington." I was complaining about this whole waiting thing and what he said was this: "Once you've sold a story to an anthology, and the check has cleared [that all important phrase again!], forget about it. If it appears in a year or two, you'll be happily suprised. If it doesn't, shrug it off and keep writing."

So, thanks, Steve Sawicki. Thanks, Dan Kimmel. Thanks, Tom Howard/John Reid.

Everyone else: Please buy the anthology book with my short story! The book is called "Watching Time" and is available at Amazon.com. You can click through on the link at the right. My short story is entitled "Sitting at the Gate of the Temple," and my nom de plum is "B. Lynch Black"