Through Rose-Colored Lenses

Since "going gimp" via a vitreous hemorrhage in the one good eye in October 2009, I have done little work with my longer fiction. I’ve written perhaps a dozen short fiction pieces, and have not been very thorough in keeping either division submitted to editors; there’s a lot of detail searching, and that’s more difficult these days, obviously. The blog has kept me writing and given me a small regular audience that seems comprised of both known people and strangers. I do write to entertain and inform, so I am grateful to those who take an interest in these more cerebral parts of my life.
Despite the lessened progress on the fiction side of things, I’ve had some great accomplishment. "Advance Gratitude" and "Welcome to the Konvokashun" were accepted by the publications "for which" I wrote each, first time out of the gate. "A Pediatrician in Wartime" and "The Thirteenth Day on Kurko" each saw less than a half dozen submissions before finding acceptance. Other stories that had more difficulty finding just the right editorial match found homes, so hard work has ushered in some good luck, though not enough to balance the bad luck of my new physical realities.
My latest acceptance is also of a story accepted with only the second submission, "Through Rose-Colored Lenses." Breath and Shadow, an online magazine "for and by disability culture," took it. This same magazine published my story "Smokestacks" a few years back.
"Through Rose-Colored Lenses." is specifically remarkable on the blog because it is, to date, the only fiction piece I have done that specifically finds inspiration from and gives outlet to my disability, specifically the blindness, and the circumstances that started this ball rolling into a personal avalanche.
The story is humor. The editor expressed concern that it may be offensive to some, but I figure if humor doesn’t offend anybody, it’s probably not really that funny. There’s a butt to every joke. The story has social satire, with a particular focus on sex and drugs in ways that may surprise. And there’s farting that will make Stephen King proud. I wrote it with a specific anthology in mind, . I think its failure there was more of a personal political issue than a story quality issue. The anthology ended up featuring something like fifteen or so stories, and only one was by a writer with whom the editor did not already have a personal or electronic relationship. As "Through Rose-Colored Lenses" is an "immediate future" science fiction and not part of the "Sivil Galaxi" milieu I have been putting most fiction attention on, I didn’t keep up on submitting it to editors. Breath and Shadow is only the second magazine to have reviewed it.
Breath and Shadow comes to the web from Maine. They are a free, none-subscription web-zine, free for the browsing at all times and to all readers.The story is slated for the winter issue, so should hit the world wide web in January or so. I’ll keep the readers here appraised, specifically as the story fits into the Blindsided! themes and subjects more than any of my other stories do.