Where I First Met God accepted for preliminary submission

I just heard from the editors of Unruly Catholic Women Writers: Volume II that my personal essay about growing up Catholic and bisexual has been selected for the anthology. They’ll be submitting it to the University of South Carolina Press and have included the disclaimer that USC may wish to change the final content of the book before publication, meaning my essay could be cut or require serious revisions, both of which I feel OK about. Any good editorial project will require a series of “cuts” before the final product comes out, and any writer should consider it an honor each time she manages to dodge the knife.

If USC decides to keep the essay, it will officially wrap up my three-publication goal for 2009. A letter in the Unsent Letters anthology and the QueerDimensions short story were the first two, but the third has been a little nebulous. A version of the essay mentioned above has also been accepted into an anthology about Catholicism and lesbianism, but that book doesn’t yet have an “in” with any particualr press, as far as I know, and I’m not sure whether it will ever see print (although I hope it will). I’ve also published an article through the Call to Action newsletter; it was unpaid, but still published for a real audience. Perhaps three nebulous publication credits can be considered equal to one official one — although I’d still feel much better about claiming victory with a third contract in hand.