Frederick Rustam
Bewildering Stories biography
Frederick Rustam is a retired federal civil servant. He spent 28 years indexing technical reports for the Department of Defense. He definitely prefers writing fiction to figuring out what the heck those darn technical writers are going on about.
He began writing science fiction in the autumn of 1995. As a pioneer writer among pioneering ezines, he found fairly easy acceptance by those early ones, some of which were desperate for submissions. In twelve years, he’s learned a lot about ezines and their policies. Enough said about that.
“The Rock People” in Issue 241 of Bewildering Stories marks his — TA!DA! — 100th appearance in an ezine (he writes only for them). He’s gotten fiction writing pretty much out of his system, and he now rarely submits. His stories have appeared in 35 ezines and on two personal websites, most of which are defunct. One appearance was by the editor’s request; that was really gratifying.
Yeah, he’s received rejections too, but not a lot. At last tiresome count, 46 of his 100 stories were still up on the Web. He’s afraid to check again, lest he discover that he has almost disappeared from that dynamic venue and to feel that it was all for nothing. (Just kidding; it’s been a great ride.)
His experience in writing for ezines allows him to assert a daring principle: the joy of a first publishing can make a novice writer a better writer. That kind of feedback can stimulate motivation and skill like nothing else. It sure did for Frederick Rustam.
Copyright © 2007 by Bewildering Stories
