Came home today to five consecutive moments of utter joy and excitement.

Moment of joy and excitement #1:
There was an envelope in my mailbox from Leading Edge Magazine, and that could, and did, mean only one thing: my contributor copy was here, containing my short story Diamond Sharks. And indeed, when I opened the envelope, the beautiful sea-blue cover appeared of issue 55.

Mojae #2:
Turning to the table of contents, I found that Diamond Sharks was the second story in the issue, and they’d come up with a lovely little one-sentence blurb for it.

Mojae #3:
Turning immediately to the story itself (of course), I discovered not one, not two, not three, but four gorgeous and perfect illustrations depicting key scenes in the story. Illustrator Michael Madder did an incredible job of capturing the atmosphere and essence of Oceana, the planet where the story takes place.

Mojae #4:
Staring at the illustrations, I realized I’d seen his style before, recently. Very recently. And closing the magazine, I discovered the best of the illustrations: a full-color picture of my main character, after his transformation, swimming the deep waters of Oceana with a wistful look on his face. (This also explained why the cover had this beautiful sea-blue color, obviously.)

Mojae #5:
And it took me an embarassingly long time to realize that this picture on the front of the magazine could easier be described as ‘the cover illustration’, which in turn meant that Diamond Sharks is the cover story!