So I recently signed the contract for my first professional sale, a short story to Escape Pod.

I’m pretty excited. This is a real publication credit — Escape Pod is an SFWA-qualifying market — and that’s exciting enough. But what makes Escape Pod unique is that the stories are released not only on the web site, but also as a recorded podcast.

That’s right: someone’s going to read my story. The narrators are always very good, too. I’ve enjoyed many of Escape Pod’s tales on my daily commute since discovering them a couple months ago. Some stories are new and never before published, like my two favorites so far, John Markley’s Among the Living and David John Baker’s The Hunter Captain. Other stories are reprints, or classics given wonderful readings, like Theodore Sturgeon’s The Man Who Lost the Sea and Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon.

That’s some pretty crazy company for my little story to keep.