Improperly Prepared Blowfish

I was waiting for the lineup to be announced on the website, typically timid, but hey, a little hype can’t hurt, and since a few others have announced their stories’ acceptances, I figure maybe it’s kosher, especially since I’m excited!

I am happy to have sold a story to the very unique and bizarrely wonderful anthology Machine of Death, which is based on about the weirdest anthology concept I’ve come across in a while:

The machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. It didn’t give you the date and it didn’t give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words “DROWNED” or “CANCER” or “OLD AGE” or “CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN”. It let people know how they were going to die.

I got several really exciting story ideas when I read the call for submissions, and the credit for that goes to the guys who thought up this idea. However, I only got around to writing up one: a nasty little tale about what happens when a small group of yakuza get their hands on one of these machines. Happily, Machine of Death has accepted the story.

Apparently, there’s going to be a Creative Commons PDF in the works, as well as an audiobook version. There’s some publisher interest, so we’ll see what happens with the hard-copy version of this exciting project!

Other authors announcing accepted work so far: Camille Alexa and “radtea.”

6 thoughts on “Improperly Prepared Blowfish

  1. Too cool! Congrats!

    It sounds like a really great anthology. I hadn’t heard about a CFS. There’s so much out there and so few hours in a day…

  2. Hey! Congratulations to you. I, too, am inordinately excited about this weird little project. I’m not sure what it was that stirred the creative juices of so many with this one, but I can’t wait for the end-result. Look forward to reading “Improperly Prepared Blowfish”. My story’s called “Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths”.

    See you there!
    ~~Camille

  3. Thanks all!

    Stephanie,

    Yeah, I hear you. I didn’t write any pirate stories for that very reason. :)

    Camille,

    Yeah, it got a lot of people thinking! Good anthology concept, I guess, is the key. Kind of audacious, really. “Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths” sounds like a riot waiting to happen.

    Kwandongbrian,

    Yeah, they cite the Webcomic as inspiration right there on the About page of the site. I still think the leap to, “Hey, let’s have an anthology of stories in a world where that happened,” is cool.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *