"Lavish" / Fantastic Stories of the Imagination / Published Summer 2000

This particular tale has become my recently-completed second novel Margaret's Ark (my first, One Night at Good Shepherd, was awaiting word from the publishing world as I wrote this, more recently it's tucked safely away in my closet where it can't hurt anyone - dk). "Lavish" is a modern day take of the great flood. Pirate Writings bought it, before the magazine changed its name to Fantastic Stories. "Lavish" appeared in their Summer 2000 issue. This makes my second printed magazine sale, but the only one to make it to print since Mindmares went out of business (see below). You used to be able to find this magazine in most big book stores' magazine racks (B&N usually), but now DNA Publications is out of business - note (Jan 07) do not order anything from them - the publisher will take your money and you'll get nothing in return. They went from being a prodigious publisher of magazines to one man stealing people's money if they get suckered in by the website (yes, he robbed me of $45 for a Chronicle subscription recently). However, though it's one of my better stories, the typesetter ruined it, compressed scene breaks and adding so many typos that the story's pretty hard to follow. Email me and I'll gladly point you to a copy as you should have seen it. I won't even mention the why-did-he-say-that? comments in the editor's introduction to the story.

Reviews: Tangent Online : An insightful review of the Fantastic Stories issue. Insightful because he picked up on the fact that they mangled my story. The page is gone now, but here's what reviewer Chris East said:

"Lavish" by Daniel Keohane is a considerable step up, a multiple protagonist examination of how people might react in the face of a coming disaster. The imminent threat of a coming deluge has inspired the building of arks across the world, and a variety of characters are forced to wrestle with their fears and issues of religious faith. I found this story more entertaining and engaging than the first two, but its length didn't feel sufficient to sustain the various story lines. Also it seemed to me as though the scene breaks had been accidentally deleted; the story careens confusingly from one viewpoint to the next without hinting at any change of setting or character. It seems more likely this was a production error than an authorial decision, but either way it doesn't serve the work.