I’ve been away for a bit. Work has persisted in being unaccommodating for my blogging regimen, and after fracturing my elbow Monday night I haven’t been much for typing. Today is the first day it’s really been possible.

First, the announcement: My first piece of flash fiction, “At the End of the Tunnel” is up at 10Flash. For some reason I was thinking October issue would come out later in the month, but it came out on the first.

Second, notes: I’ve gotten a whole lot of rejection. I’ve been sending around “Kiss of Death” to one SFWA-recognized pro market after another, and have routinely gotten shot down. I’m wondering at what point I may want to just aim for a lower target.

I’m also unlikely to clear the first round of voting for the Just One Bite contest. It started off pretty close, but at this point the other story I was competing with has a lead of 70+ votes. I’m trying to take consolation in just being a finalist, and I think the story will still be published through AllRomanceeBooks.com. But it’s still a bummer.

My outline proposal for The Edge of Propinquity did not get picked up, but Ms. Brozek had much nice to say about it. I’m not sure what to do with the outline. I’ve been wanting to do something with this idea for a while, but just haven’t had a good venue. Time constraints suck.

I’m having to triage my project list. With NaNoWriMo, there’s a bunch of deadlines I’m having to reconsider. Stuff that’s due in November or even early December will need to be finished by the end of the month. Bare minimum that’s polishing two existing stories and writing two new short stories. There are two or three that I’m leaning towards trying to accomplish, but I just don’t think I can squeeze out five stories in a little over three weeks. This doesn’t include the time needed to outline my novel for November, work on games for AmberCon Northwest or write Associated Content articles under my pseudonym as part of her branding.

Blargh!

Once December comes around, I’ll be hitting the ground running. Since Foolscap, Nate and I been talking about doing a collaborative series in the vein of Shadow Unit. Basically a TV series done in prose, following a season structure. We’re looking at a modern day Lovecraft piece and are pinging people to help with it. I’m really chomping at the bit to get going on this, and Nate’s about ready to kill me if I don’t shut up about it.

And then I’ll have more deadlines on top of this.

I think for future blog posts I will need to pull away from the honeydew list and go back to the war journal format. Because I have lots of things to work on, but I’m having trouble with butt-in-chair time. And if Jay Lake can churn out prose while fighting cancer, I can do it with a wonky schedule and a gimpy arm.