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.

 Zero writing done today, but I think I've figured out what I need to do to get back to it. My usual routine is to spend the morning cruising the internet and doing email and generally goofing off. However, I've discovered that the baby sleeps best and consistently until 10am and so that's when I should be doing my writing. I generally don't consider myself awake enough to do much productive writing that early, but it's the only consistent timeframe I've found so far with him and so I'm going to have to adapt. I'm going to make sure I get to bed at a decent time tonight, so I get enough sleep, and give it a try tomorrow.

I read my story in Paradox today, just to do so, and I'm horrified that I missed 4 really dumbass typos. I must have read and reread the galley a half dozen times, and not a single time did I catch any of these glaring mistakes. I wonder if I should try printing out electronic galleys for now on and reading them that way, because I do seem to have a better time of locating typos after I print something up. I spent this morning going over the galley for "What Makes Us Strong", so my day wasn't a complete abyss of non-production. I also got back an honorable mention from WotF for "The Jade Bones", arriving a startlingly quick 49 days (the new low response time at Duotrope.). I'm going to reread it and tomorrow or Thursday I'll ship it off to Realms of Fantasy. I don't have anything lined up to send for Q1so maybe I'll think of trying to write something new for it.

Finished reading and spent most of the rest of the day oogling dreamily at the galley I was proofing. I hope this kind of joy doesn't wear off the more I sell stuff to actual print magazines that send out galleys, because it just feels wonderful and makes me cheery. *Sigh*

Back to work tomorrow though....

2nd and 3rd place winners for the second quarter of WotF have been named, but so far no word of 1st place or any call to say "We're sorry." I've been checking the WotF blog and discussion board about every fifteen minutes since about 8 this morning, when I saw the first report of 3rd place (Paula Stiles. Congrats, Paula! 2nd place when to

snickelish. Congrats to her!). I'm not all that optimistic since they both got their calls last night, but who knows? I've already got another story lined up to send on Monday and this story will be off to Asimov's. I've actually thought about taking LeGuin's approach (or was it Connie Willis? I'm not sure) of printing up a copy and having it already in the envelope and ready to mail should the news be less than "Yeehaw!"

I've been able to think about little else today. I'm probably driving Jeff crazy with my constant trips to my office to check the internet, but he's been humoring me. What a sweetie.

 

So Electric Spec sent back a no on their final round decision on my story. I'm not too disappointed since I've gotten some feedback on it since first submitting and want to do another rewrite, then try it at some places like Abyss & Apex and Realms of Fantasy and Talebones. On the positive side, received notice this morning from ASIM that my story there has passed the first reader and is in the second round. The last time that happened was more than a year ago and three subs ago, so I'm pleased to have made it this far. Now if I can just make the third round....

On a side note, as much as I like how ASIM keeps authors informed about the progress of their stories through the slushpile, it's a really bad thing for someone like me, who's already obsessive compulsive about tracking response times normally. I find myself checking their progress page several times a day, despite knowing they only update it once daily, if that often. What exactly I'm looking at, I'm not sure. Mostly it's just staring at the numbers. The LJ page is even worse because it's got titles and so I know which numbers are my friends' stories and so can follow their progress as well. It's actually a bit interesting seeing the titles because I'm blown away by just how bad some of them are (well, perhaps instead of calling them bad, let's say that if the ASIM LJ was a table of contents of stories, I would only be reading a handful of them since when I open a magazine and decide which story I want to read, I look for interesting titles.). That's not to say that my titles are any good either, but seeing my own reaction to what I consider bad titles just illuminates the fact that titles matter and they should be very carefully chosen. I now understand why Gardner Dozois made such a point of telling me that my titles to most of my Clarion stories sucked. :)

Today is writing, and I will make myself make some notable progress. I just need to pry myself away from the internet.