Got an email tonight that I was hoping for and very happy to get: My odd little bit of cyberpunk erotica, “Wetwire”, has been accepted to the Agony & Ecstasy anthology coming out next fall from Berkley Books.

The thing that kills me is that it’s such a weird little story, I honestly never thought the editor would take it. I was mainlining William Gibson when I wrote it–more than normal, even, because it’s a Thing That I Do–and what started out as porn in my head turned into the exploration of two ideas that struck me as insanely interesting:

• The people who occupy the liminal space between when a new technology is introduced to the world and when it finds a mass commercial use. Because in that space, innovators play with it and take it apart and use it for all kinds of crazy shit that didn’t occur to anyone. That kind of environment is where Apple and Microsoft were both born, and where the first internet communities sprang up. It’s where the really neat stuff happens.

• The connections that technology can forge between the mind and the body. Cyberpunk is full of occurrences of the trope of technology freeing minds from bodies. I wanted to play with the idea of a kind of technology that would reconnect someone who feels like she’s losing touch with her own flesh.

I got so caught up in this stuff that I almost forgot the sex, and I was worried that the story lacked a center because of that. But apparently not. Apparently it’s good enough, anyway.

The anthology itself won’t actually be out in print for another year. But right now I’m more thrilled than impatient, so yay. As always, watch this space for news.