Submitting work and knowing your audience.

I'm currently in the process of revising a short story to Playboy magazine as a part of their yearly college issue.  They've put the call out to college writers to submit.  Anyone who's ever read Playboy with both hands knows that to be published in the fiction section of their magazine is a big deal. 
I'd originally begun revisions of a story called Deus Ex Machina which is actually a prequel story to my current comic book script.   It's about a young girl who visits Greece on a college exchange trip only to find her host to be Eris, the Goddess of Chaos.  Eris sees the girl as her opportunity to leave Greece and regain much of her lost power. 
My wife had suggested that I might reconsider and submit a story I'd written a few years ago called, The Chronicals of Mr. Fathom. On review I decided to heed her advice.  I'd been gung ho about revising Machina because of it's ties to my current work and because I wasn't happy with current draft.  But her urging reminded me to consider the publication I was submitting to and to keep in mind what had a better chance of getting published.  I'll post a sample of the story here for view, let me know what you think. 

Kevin Smith and geek obsession

Geek news outlets have been lighting up lately about the recent news surrounding Kevin Smith's debut of Red State at Sundance.  Apparently amidst controversy and protest the film opened to... luke warm results.  A few years ago I'd have been crushed by this news and probably lashed out at anyone calling him overrated over Facebook or Twitter, (if I had a twitter account.)  But as I get older, I'm finding many of the obsessions I had when I was younger fading.  Now I'm mature enough to recogognize that Mr. Smith is a filmmaker who made some excellent films that spoke to me at an age when few other works of media did. 
That being said, I find my cooling of fandom to be somewhat disconcerting.  Is it a sign of maturity or over saturation of media that I can't find anything to stay passionate about.  I worry that my inability to remain loyal to an artist that moved me, may be a side effect of this digital ADD society.  Of course I know I'm still a Whedonite geek, and a little maturing never hurt anyone. 

Tao of Geek

I’m a product of what you’d call the “Nintendo Generation.” Being too young to be in Generation X, and still needing a trendy generational designation, this is a term that has been coined to describe those of us who grew up on 3 ¼ inch GI Joe figures and Japanese import cartoons before they were called “Anime” like “Thundercats,” “Silver Hawks,” and of course the quintessential “Transformers.” Not to mention growing up post Atari, yet pre-internet, probably the biggest invention of our generation was the Nintendo. The game system that started the home video-game craze, hence the moniker, “Nintendo Generation.” However there is another movement that I think is more appropriate as our generation get’s older. As we all start becoming adults, moving into the working world and seeing things from our childhood come back again for the first time. Movies such as “Spider-Man” and “Transformers,” and the rise of comic-book culture, I think now is the time to embrace the movement to reclaim the term Geek. As the world becomes a scarier place the older we get, there’s a greater importance felt not only on people who are free thinkers, but also on properties that allow people to escape even if only for a short time. So now, I’m more proud to say I’m a Geek, than a member of the “Nintendo Generation.”