Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Ant King and Other Stories by Benjamin Rosenbaum

So, I'm working in a somewhat random order through my Clarion West classmates. The thing about them is, not only are the all good writers, but every single one of them is published in at least one pro market. I don't know if that's a Clarion West first, but it's certainly rare, even for a workshop of that caliber. They'll each get a writeup in this blog eventually.

The Ant King by Benjamin Rosenbaum was published before we ever even started the workshop. Not sure why Ben thought he needed a workshop, but I'm not complaining. He was great to share a crit circle with and despite the fact that his first week story made the Nebula final ballot, he remains accessable and supportive to the likes of me.

Both he and Samantha Ling read my LDS romance novel and sent me crits. Ben even stayed on the phone with me for two hours going through page by page. Ben has a full time day job, two kids, and lives in Switzerland. I think he either has a couple clones of himself, a very realistic sounding AI that handles his phone calls, or has evolved past the need for sleep (though even if this were true, I'm still thinking he'd need clones and an AI).

I'm excited to see that his book, The Ant King and Other Stories, is slated for release. His entire biblio of published work can be found here. The moral of this story is, go to Clarion West. You never know what kind of uber-talented professional might answer your phone calls because you once cooked pasta with him at 4am on a Thursday while ranting about overuse of adverbs.

2 comments:

  1. Well, that and because you wrote a really interesting LDS romance novel (and I don't get to read many LDS romance novels...)

    Thanks for all the braggin' on my behalf! :-)

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  2. Yes... but there are a lot of things I don't "get" to do that I also don't really want to do. Thanks for the generous gift of your time and insight that you gave to the project, and thanks also for phrasing your fixes so well that all I needed to do was forward an excerpt on to my editor to have her agree to let me rework parts of the book she hadn't asked for a rewrite on. If there's anything I can ever do to help you. I mean, if you ever want me to put a good word in with the LDS romance publishing world or... something?

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