It's the little things that distract me to no end. Like today, I was progressing slowly on the story, pressing towards the end, then I take a break and hop over to the SFReader forum and low and behold Chris Cevasco of Paradox has posted that he's finished the slush and it seems my story is one of seven he's held for further consideration (well I guess that answers my concern that it wasn't historical enough. It's at least enough to warrant a second look:)). All very useful information and I appreciate that he takes the time to keep authors in the loop like this because I'm the type who looks forward to mail delivery everyday when I have something out through snail mail (I obsessively check to see if the mail's been delivered every ten minutes for a two hour period, and I even have a special way of closing the mailbox so that I'll know from looking out the bedroom window as to whether or not the mail lady's been there--thanks to someone once hitting our mailbox with a baseball bat, it's difficult to snap shut all the way and the mail lady never puts the effort into closing it properly.). At least I can lay off my mailbox for a bit, until the end of February anyway. But the resulting adrenaline rush of knowing I was in the final running again was enough to keep me from getting anything done since seeing it around 2:30. Oh well. Tomorrow's another day, as they say.

I did read and critique two stories today as well as do a bit on "The Hearts of Men", which by the way is a western retelling of the Huitzilopochtli/Coyolxauhqui myth (as in cowboy hats and pistols). Oh, and there's chupacabras involved too. I haven't quite figured out yet if it's horror or dark fantasy, though I'm hoping it's the latter, so I have more market options.