The first bazillion times Google Alerts brought me the latest 'Women in SF Meme' link I got cross: so many people who'd never heard of me! (Tiptree award? Old news! Nebula Award? Who cares! Arthur C. Clarke and Locus and BSFA finalist? What does it matter! Premio Italia and six Lambdas? Eh, who cares who what foreigners and queers think!) I'm not complaining--well, not much. It's my own fault. "It Takes Two" is the first SF I've written for fifteen years. Most readers these days don't know who I am. So when "It Takes Two" was published, none of the anthologies put me on the cover, because no one knows who I am. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: no one knows who I am because they don't put me on the cover. The perils of not sticking to one genre...
But today, at the latest batch of links, I grinned. So many potential readers who have never heard of me! Now I just have to work out how to, y'know, reach them. But I'm not in a hurry. Slow River and Ammonite (and Bending the Landscape, and With Her Body) aren't going anywhere. Clearly, though, I need to put together that collection of f/sf stories I've been muttering about for ages.
I know, I know, I'm always talking about it and never doing it. I won't be getting to it immediately this time, either. But it's going to be my top priority when I've finished a first draft of Hild.
So what, in your opinion, is the perfect size/page number for a book-length collection of stories? And do you like Complete Collections, including the slightly weaker pieces, or do you prefer Selected Stories?
Something to muse over on a dark, rainy day. (Yep, still raining. No summer for Seattle. Yet.)
