My Mother and I Go Shopping My Mother and I Go Shopping My Mother and I Go Shopping

Adventures in the Twilight Zone

Many years ago, on the old GEnie computer network, a magazine editor was griping about the stupid submissions she was getting. Her guidelines said she was looking for heroic fantasy, but she said she would still get stories that were neither heroic nor genre fantasy, with titles like "My Mother and I Go Shopping."

"I bet I could write a decent fantasy story with that title," I said.

"Yes, Lawrence, I'm sure you could, but these people are not you," she replied.

So, determined to prove that I was me, I wrote "My Mother and I Go Shopping," and I sent it to that editor.

However, she later told me, the day it arrived in her office the magazine's publisher came in and looked through some of the slush, and spotted my story. She saw the title, made disgusted noises, and rejected it unread. The editor I'd written it for never got to see it.

So I sold it elsewhere, specifically an anthology, Adventures in the Twilight Zone, edited by Carol Serling. That it was published in that venue should give you an idea what sort of story it is.

In 2011 I included it as one of the stories in The Final Folly of Captain Dancy & Other Pseudo-Historical Fantasies, which needed (for contractual reasons) to have four stories.

In 2023 that was replaced with a larger version, including ten stories, called The Final Folly of Captain Dancy & Other Tall Tales.

And here we are.

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