Tag: freelancing

Battlescar ++

Dear Kyle Brodzky,

Thank you for submitting your story to —- for consideration in the —- anthology. We received a lot of great stories and the final selection was difficult to make. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to use Modern Appliances, 1946. We wish you luck in placing it elsewhere.

Thank you,
—- and —-, Editors

I’m psyched.  A bunch of fellow Thunderdome writers got into the magazine though, so maybe bruteforcing random publications as a mob is a viable option.

Also, I’ve got this section of the site up and running.  It’s nowhere near as stylish looking as Greg Stolze’s archetypical layout, but maybe some day.  I don’t know anything about document formatting anymore.

Excavator and Pan: Two Paths to Literary Gold

An excavator tearing up dirt and rock ton by ton and dumping it into a machine that blasts it with water and shakes it down a sluice box, separating the heavier material across a series of riffles, and the gold flakes eventually being sifted down into a thin layer of synthetic ‘moss’ to be collected later.  A scoop of dirt and rock being carefully panned by hand, swirling the water gently to gradually reveal whatever small bits of precious metal are hidden beneath.  I could have used any number of metaphors to display the disparity between brute forcing one’s way through as much material as possible, or taking time to handle an individual project with a bit more focus- a shotgun blast versus a precision rifle, fast food versus fine dining, a hammer and sickle, whatever.  I’ve been watching Gold Rush: Alaska lately.

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