It was a good mail day: I got the free copy of The Thing About Georgie, by Lisa Graff, that I won last week, and I got several copies of Spider magazine with one of my games in it. It took a week to get the book, and 4-and-a-half years to get the magazine!

I submitted the activity to Spider sometime in 2002 (I could look up exactly when–I have the records–but I won’t), and got the acceptance letter in December 2002. That letter gets carried forward year after year because it’s unfinished business. The activity was edited a year or two later, but then put on hold until 2006 when it was re-edited for the March 2007 issue. Whew!

There are good and bad aspects to this experience. The good: Spider is a beautiful magazine. They make my games look amazing. The bad: I still haven’t been paid, and the sum I agreed to in 2002 is not worth today what it was in 2002. The good: This has been so long in coming that I gave up expecting it ages ago, and now it’s a fun surprise. When the money finally comes it will seem like a bonus rather than a payment. Work? When did I work for this? The bad: This is not an unusual story; I’ve heard it over and over from other writers about other publishers. This is one slooooooow business. Things happen. The good: I’m glad they’re finally using it. Also good: It makes my needlework biz seem positively zippy!