I did lots and lots of reading yesterday, and should finish up my read-through today. Started the morning off doing a critique.

Yesterday, I received word from my editor at Sorcerous Signals that my story "The Divine Conquest of Mexico" has been selected for their print best of year anthology called Arcane Whispers, which will available from Lulu.com come May. And I get paid again, twice as much as before, so that's a nice touch. I love making reprint sales that don't require me to go submit and deal with rejections.

Or whichever ring is specifically reserved for those struggling to write query letters. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I've got about a page of notes, I even cracked open my copy of How to Write Irresistible Query Letters (which I almost immediately threw aside and said, "This is such crap!"), then spent the rest of the evening trolling the Snarkives for tidbits of wisdom to help me along. Tomorrow I'll troll the archives over at Nathan Bransford's blog and Pubrants, to see what else I can dig up that will enlighten me and help me turn what right now sounds like a very typical fantasy plot into something that feels special like my novel. Miss Snark was right: this will take at least a month to write "good." Unfortunately I have to have something by Friday to submit with said novel to crit group, and while I love my novel, I'm embarrassed by my query letter so far.

I think I'll go down some gin (well, probably a Bacardi Silver Raz, because hard liquor gives me headaches these days, and gin tastes like what I imagine paint thinner would taste like) then go to bed, and hopefully wake up tomorrow bright-eyed and ready to conquer query-land again.