Nth Degree

So I got this e-mail the other day...

Michael Pederson <editor@nthzine.com>

Sat 6/23/2018 1:07 AMErik Harshman (erikdharshman@hotmail.com)

Erik,

First, my sincere apologies for taking so long to respond. We had a handful of deaths in the Nth Degree family that made it very difficult for me to even think about the zine for far too long. Time has passed now and we are hard at work again; we’ve designed a new website and have been regularly posting fiction 2-3 times a week since February with a new issue coming out next week. We’ve also added a Patreon page to allow people a way to subscribe to the zine.

Thanks for submitting your story (UNIMPORTANT) to Nth Degree. If it’s still available I'd like to publish it in an upcoming issue of Nth Degree.

I'll be in touch with you shortly to give you an exact date on when it will go live on the site.

Thanks again,

Michael D. Pederson

Publisher/Editor

NthZine.com

 

Apparently, I submitted to this magazine on June 4, 2012, at 8:50 PM (I know this because my original e-mail was quoted at the bottom of his e-mail to me).

Anyhow, this will be the second time this short story of mine ("Unimportant") will be published.

The first was in the April 2013 issue (#11) of Dark Moon Digest.

That was a print publication... you can buy it off their website or Amazon (in Kindle or physical copy)... Didn't get paid for it, though... Only got a free copy of the magazine to place upon my shelf.

But oh well.

I've been published more in eZines than I have in print anyhow.

True story about the writing of that short story "Unimportant":

I wrote it in summer of 2011.

I was reading Brett Easton Ellis's The Informers while house/dogsitting (in the suburbs) for my Mom.

I then traveled back to my apartment (in the city) to check on my apartment, check my mail, etc.

While there I started guzzling a can of sugar-free Red Bull (at the time I bought it in bulk from CostCo) and writing this story.

Don't know where it came from, the ennui I was feeling about life at the time (which was probably a result of reading Ellis), the amphetamines in the Red Bull, or the lethargy of summer (a season I've always hated... love having time off from school/work, but hate the heat and the fact that it brings every annoying character out of the woodwork)... it could also be the lack of monster movies at the time. The last good one we had was Cloverfield (which the editors of Dark Moon Digest commented on the "Cloverfield-like monster" in my story) and before that it Peter Jackson's King Kong. Pacific Rim hadn't come out yet, the new (and awesome) American Godzilla hadn't dropped yet, the Jurassic Park franchise hadn't been revived yet and Kong hadn't been reinvented (only remade).

But in the end I'm rather proud of my story.

A horror story?

Perhaps not.

But a dark comedy with a monster in it. A satire of millennial life, thirtysomething modern men, relationships, romance, sex, contemporary living, stupid people, smart people and people too self-involved to notice what's going on around them.

Read it if you want.

Or don't.

Either way... The story will always be there.

And that's the important thing about writing... whether someone reads it or ignores it, remembers it or forget it, likes it or hates it... it was still created... And that still matters.