First off - big news - I sold my first short story!!  "The Rendezvous" will appear in the April 2010 issue of Shelter of Daylight from Sam's Dot Publishing.  I got the good word Wednesday and I'm still a little dizzy.

Now for old business:

Last month I got an editorial response to another of my stories with requests for revisions. (Which surprised me, since I'd slapped the story together in such a short amount of time I expected an outright rejection.) While helpful in general, the editor's comments weren't much on specifics. They just highlighted my strengths and weaknesses, with a very nice request to address those issues and resubmit by Sep. 15.

Yes, I've been procrastinating, and now it's time for that story to go under the knife. Step one: a total dissection. Step two: reassembly and reanimation. We'll just have to see if it starts breathing again once I hook up the electrodes to its nipples and yell "Clear!" Otherwise, I'll just have to hose off the table and bury all the bloody bits in the backyard.

Wish me luck!

My project this year seems to be coming along nicely.  My goal is one short story a month.  I've got two in the bank, and the third is clipping by at a good pace.

I'm glad I finally got over myself and started doing short fiction.  I've found it's a lot easier to get people to read short stories than novels.  (Yeah, I know, who'da thunk? Duhrr...)  For years I'd thougt short stories as dead a format as BetaMax, and I'm still not convinced the bulk of the reading public pays them any attention, but at least from a writers' standpoint I'm beginning to see the appeal.