A few weeks after I got word that I'd sold my first story, I attended the 1998 Chattacon in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Another first; I didn't have to pay to get in! And they put me on panels so I could sit next to Andy Duncan and laugh at all the clever stuff he was saying! (This is actually pretty much what I do to this day when I attend Chattacon, which we'll be traveling to again in a few months. It's always a great trip, if for nothing else than the awesome aquarium.)
After one such panel, an Atlanta based small press and webzine editor came up to me and solicited a contribution to a new magazine he was launching called Pulp Eternity. He had very specific needs--he wanted a time travel story about either Elvis or Tesla, he wanted it to be 2,500 words long, and he wanted it in two weeks. First sale, first convention as a "pro," and now this! A commission!
And so I went home to Louisville and wrote what I later called my minimum wage story. My methodology when I was first starting out was to do a lot of research and a lot of notebook work before actually doing any, y'know, writing. I would write interviews with characters, collect photographs and maps to paste into my notebook (every story must have its own notebook! and its own folder for attendant paperwork!), use multiple outlining "strategies" for the same piece and so on. As you might guess, this is not a highly profitable use of time in terms of how much money the writing of any given genre short story is likely to yield. (It's also not highly profitable in terms of producing even a small number or stories, or of artistic success for that matter, but these things lie without the purview, y'dig?)
In this case, however, since I was now a professional, I decided to keep track of exactly how much time I spent on the story, whether it was reading or writing or even just thinking about it. And I decided that I wanted to make better than the prevailing federal minimum wage, which at that time was a paltry $5.15 per hour. "At that time," he says. So, zero prep work.
I was working an odd tech bubble job in those days, wholesaling computer equipment via telephone and the web. High stress cubicle farm stuff that took up a lot of time and energy. What with one thing and another, I found myself up against the deadline without having even started, and so on a Saturday in February of 1998 (I could look up the exact date, probably, because I still have the folder. Every story must have its own folder!), I walked down Lower Brownsborough Road to the video store where the World's Biggest Chow Yun-Fat fan* worked and, because they didn't have anything about Tesla in stock, rented a couple of Elvis movies. I went home and watched 'em. Then I drafted this story, sent it to a buddy who read it and suggested some changes, incorporated all but one of his notes, then sent it to the editor via the electrical mail. He sent back an acceptance about ten minutes later. So I totally busted minimum wage.
The story, well, it is what it is. The editor wound up making a couple of changes: he was even more dash happy than I am, and he didn't like my title or ending line. I think my original title was Even the King and it tied into a now forgotten original last line that was anything but "Long live the King." One of my, um, artistic goals for the piece was to not use that phrase. My buddy had correctly predicted that the editor would want exactly that phrase as the ending line and the title. Being a high powered professional writer now, I dug in my heels a little on the line (though I did rewrite it, just not to what I saw as the editor's lame specifications) but he pretty much told me that he would title it whatever he wanted and that was that.
The magazine, when it eventually came out, was a full sized newsprint publication. Even the cover is newsprint. It was billed as a "collectible" and the copy I have, signed and numbered by the editor, is #294 of 2,100. The editor (he was also the publisher, but you've probably figured that out) kind of disappeared from the field shortly thereafter and I don't know if he ever produced a second issue (which he also solicited a story from me for--"Dragons! Less than a thousand words! I need it by Thursday!"--though he didn't buy what I sent him). The check for Long Live the King did clear, however, and I got another fun illustration.
The apartment in the story is pretty much exactly my first apartment, a truly crappy little place I lived at on Kentucky Street in Bowling Green when I was nineteen. Artist Brett Tadlock, to the best of my knowledge, never visited that place (I don't think I've ever met him, actually) but he got the kitchen pretty much exactly right. Even better, when Elvis shows up (oops, should have said SPOILERS), he's described like this: "He was young, maybe from around the time he filmed King Creole. But he was wearing the black leathers from the '68 comeback special." I thought it was hilarious when I realized that the illustrator took that literally--Elvis is clearly the young, slim dandy of the early films, but his leather outfit is way too big for him, because I guess, it was tailored for the Elvis of ten years later.If you click on the "continue reading Long Live the King" link below you should see another link, which will get you a PDF of the story. I imagine it'll either download or open in a browser window, depending on your setup. I'm only going to leave the file up until the next Virtual Collection entry, because, well, to be frank, this is not exactly a piece I want out there representing, y'know? If I have my druthers, this'll be the last time it's ever available. That said, I do think there are some moderately fun aspects to the story and if you read it, I hope you'll do so with a light heart.
UPDATE: The file has been removed, as scheduled.
*Why yes, I do mean that in more than one way.