The Art of Tetman Callis

Some of the stories and poems may be inappropriate for persons under 16

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The three-and-a-half-inch floppy

July 16th, 2011 · 2 Comments

This week I’m posting “Saved” to the Stories menu of this blog.  It’s a story I wrote in the late 90s and was never quite happy with.  I wrote it in first-person and sent it out, it got rejected, that’s okay, I rewrote it in third-person.  I sent it out in third-person, it got rejected, but I didn’t mind, I wasn’t happy with it, I rewrote it in second-person.  I sent it out, I still wasn’t happy with it, I hadn’t heard back yet, but that’s all right, I rewrote it again, in fourth-person for all I know.

Then I heard back.  Gulf Coast had it and wanted to publish it, would I be so kind as to send a copy on 3.5″ floppy?  Shit!  Where was the version I sent them?  Was I even sure which version it was?  Could I ask them?  Shit-shit-shit….  I dug deep into my backups, into the backups of my backups, cross-matched the file date-stamp with the database entry tracking my submissions, and sent them what I was pretty sure was the correct version.  It was, and they published it in early 2002.

Tags: Previously Published Stories · Words

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Averil Dean // Jul 19, 2011 at 4:27 pm

    When I was a little girl, I had a couple of Breyer horses and a rat-haired Barbie doll. And dirt. Lots and lots of blistering, rock-hard dirt. I’d dig around in it and make lakes for my horses, decorated with twigs and rocks and the occasional horned toad, which I liked to pretend was a dog.

    My dad was an atheist, though, and I remember how worried I was. Your soul, daddy, your everlasting soul! I was sure he’d fall into the fire before I could bring him around.

    Too late now, for both of us. I wonder where he’s gone.

  • 2 Tetman Callis // Jul 19, 2011 at 5:09 pm

    My son thought I was an atheist. I was surprised to find this out, just as he was surprised to discover I’m not.

    I was going to say something else, but I’ll say this instead: my blog has been bombarded by spam these past thirty hours; it’s good to know real people are still out there (the mosquitoes certainly think so).

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