In the span of about ten days in October (yeah, this is more recent news) I officially became an international author when translations of two of my stories were published.

At the beginning of the month, Nova Fantasia published “Ladrón de Futuros” which is the Galician translation of “Thief of Futures.”  Be honest, have you ever heard of Galician?  I hadn’t until I actually started submitting stories to foreign markets, but that lovely region of Spain now holds a special place in heart as being the first non-English speaking region to see enough “value” in my writing to actually translate it.

And to follow that up, a couple of weeks ago, Estonia’s premier science fiction publication (I think it might be their only, but that’s beside the point) Algernon published “Schrödingeri sõda” or for English speakers “The Schrödinger War.”  The editor dropped me a note and told me it was being well-received: one of their readers whose a big fan of military science fiction gave it five out of five stars, even though he couldn’t quite follow some parts.  That left me wondering if parts of that story might have gotten lost in the translation.  Given some of its nuances (and its slightly ‘literary” bent at times), that wouldn’t surprise me, but even so, the reader seemed to enjoy it so that’s rewarding to hear.  This translation is particularly rewarding to me because I have a good friend who’s Estonian so now I can claim a few bragging rights.

Seeing my words in translation has been quite an experience.  I didn’t know what to expect, but in some respects it was similar to seeing my first story in print.  I kept the Nova Fantasia translation open in web browser for several days and would periodically flipped back to it.  A little vain, I guess, but it was inspiring to see “Ladrón de Futuros” with my name under it.  Especially given the past few months I’ve had, having these two stories come out was just what my writing ego needed (only another sale to one of the big magazines could have topped it).  Given the relatively minor effort needed to submit work internationally, I’ll continue to send things out.  Most places don’t respond, but the couple of hits I’ve gotten have made it worthwhile.  And if I can build some readership elsewhere, it certainly can’t hurt—I noticed an uptick in visitors from Estonia on this site after “The Schrödinger War” was published in Algernon, so someone over there noticed it.