I actually don't have much to report, thanks to my internet connection being spotty at best yesterday (which was tremendously frustrating) and it appears to be doing the same today. I'd probably be better off just disconnecting the internet for the day and writing and stop obsessing so much over it constantly shutting off then turning back on.

Thank you everyone for their birthday wishes for Gaaron. All the presents went over well, though he's particularly enthralled with the Transformer (he was also quite impressed when I told him that I had Optimus Prime when I was a kid--and strangely enough I won it in a contest at the same Safeway that Jeff was working at at the time (I was 11 at the time, which would have made him 16).). The Indiana Jones legos were quite fun to put together, and apparently there will be a Legos Indiana Jones video game coming out in the summer. I might have to get it for the kids, since they love the Lego Star Wars ones so much (and they are pretty darn fun). Though I'm cheap and so will probably wait until it goes down to $20. The only games I pay full price for are the Grand Theft Auto games.

So I got about a page done on "The Hearts of Men." And a first happened yesterday: I got an email froma horror magazine editor asking me to send them something, even a reprint if that's all I have. It's non-paying (which I am willing to send reprints to) but I don't think I have anything that meets their guidelines so they're probably out of luck. So while I've never heard of the magazine and it's very small press (but apparently print), it's flattering to be approached like that by someone I don't know (I've been asked by at least one other editor about when I'm going to send them a story again, but that's because I've sold to them before.). Now if I could only get Ellen Datlow to send me invites to anthologies. :)

"The Hearts of Men"


So I unplugged the internet (because it was just bothersome anyway) and turned on the music and banged away at the key board, and I now have a first draft at last. I need to unplug the internet more often:). As usual I didn't figure out what precisely the story was about until about a page and a half from the end, and so will need to go back and fix the beginning, but I have draft! Yeah! My plan for the rest of the day is to make a spread sheet of stories ideas to work on (okay, in all honesty, I'm planning on going through my book of Aztec mythology and see which myths I haven't tinkered with yet, because I'm obsessed. Someday I'll learn to write about something else, but not today:)) and I might dig out my few Egyptian text books from college and see if I can do anything about my scarab story. Maybe I will attempt to do the flash challenge over at LH, to get me away from my normal routine, or better yet look through my flash challenge files and see if there's anything in there that I could work on.

I will not--I repeat, I will not--waste away my day on the internet.

ETA: Oh, and I feel pretty confident now that what I wrote, while really kind of gross at the beginning, is in fact thematically dark fantasy, not horror. Which makes me chipper because that means I can subject slushmaster to it >:).