DFL

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JORGE CANDEIAS

The Place Where Lost Things Go (Nemo 3)

After having had a story accepted to Nemo 3, I lost my job as a journalist and became part of the unemployed world. The story was actually published already during my... hm... labour break. Since I had lots of free time, in the beginning of 2003 I wrote a novel that was rejected when I tried to publish it (not really hard: I only tried one publisher), and went on writing a few short stories (a couple of them in english) until the harsh realities of life settled in. If you think the Brits are world experts in quiet desperation, try being unemployed in the poorest country of Western Europe in the middle of an economic recession. Anyway, eventually I ceased writing altogether, focusing my energy in survival, although some of the stories I had written before eventually got published here and there, mostly in electronic media but also in some magazines - I had a few jobs and took some time to earn some money in professional formation, nothing worth mentioning, really. Now I'm translating. I translated a few Howard short stories (Conan and the Puritan), a novel by James Runcie and I'm now working on an alternate history novel. So I'm back writing... sort of. And to be completely faithful to truth, I did write some very short (and very unsophisticated) stories during my recess.

Regarding the influence Nemo had in my career, since I don't quite have a career at the moment, the question isn't applicable. I got to have my name in Wikipedia and a number of English-speaking SF&F databases, though, and had my story read by a number of influential people, so one never knows what the future might bring. At least my name isn't equal to absolute zero in the English-speaking world anymore. It's close, but not quite absolute. It's worth, say, half a degree Kelvin...


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IAIN ROWAN

Ice Age (Nemo 2)
Driving In Circles (Nemo 5)

How Am I Getting On?
I've published a fair few stories in various places since Ice Age, such as Postscripts, Polyphony, Black Gate, Ellery Queen's, and Alfred Hitchcock's. My writing's always split between weird fiction and crime fiction, and in the last year or two the latter's taken the upper hand.

I'm now concentrating on longer fiction: I've just finished the revisions to a YA novel, 'Sea Change', and my novel in progress, 'One of Us', has been shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger.

What difference Nemo made:
Ice Age was the first story that anybody paid me money for. The thought that someone considered that my writing was worth that, was a real boost when I was getting started. Somebody believed. And that helped me believe.

I remember talking with Des when Nemo was just a gleam in his eye; it was great to see it become (sur)real, and I was proud that my stories appeared in it. While one of the good things about Nemo was that the anonymity focussed your attention on the stories themselves, there's an irony in that one of the things about it that I loved most was Nemo as an artifact. Beautifully designed and printed, it was nice just as an object. I'm shallow that way.

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