Lord, Save Me From the Mosquitoes

Okay, this is like, totally petty, but I'm pretty tired from working eight days straight, so I'm going to vent a little, just cause I can. That's what blogs are for, after all.

So they've had this preview up at Jim Baen's Universe for a month now. They put up snippets of the stories, a new one every other day or so. Out of the twenty-seven stories listed in the full table of contents, they have seventeen snippets up so far, plus one audio snippet.

My story isn't among them.

Now, one could argue that this is a good thing. After all, of the stories that are left unsnippeted so far, several of them are the big names: Alan Dean Foster, Gregory Benford, Gene Wolfe. So maybe I can look at the fact that mine has been held back so far as a mark of quality or something. And let's face it, somebody has to be last. It's simple math.

But there's something about the waiting, the tension, that's... It's like being in a contest, where they're announcing the winners, and they start with, like, fifth place, and you're waiting, hoping to hear your name, but also hoping not to hear your name, yet. And with every name they call that's not yours, your anxiety level goes up, because while the potential reward is increasing, the odds of you being one of the winners are going down.

And that's kind of how I feel here. I'm thinking, yeah, I should be flattered that they've held mine back, I'm going to come out with the A-listers. But there's another part of me that's saying, "Geez, all the other Introducing authors have their snippets up. And several of the bigs, like David Drake and John Ringo, also have snippets up. They've even snippeted a story that doesn't exist yet. Why don't they want people to see my story?"

Now watch, somebody at Baen's will read this and say, "Put the crybaby's story up next." Which is not really the point of this post. Really, sometimes it just feels good to complain about something.

Neon Genesis Evangelion tomorrow...