Another week of work is finally over. It feels like the last couple weeks have been hectic and stressful. Things are looking up, though. I’m flying to California on Sunday, for a few days of meetings and planning. We’re just about to start rolling out new products that will make my life much easier.

I’ve managed to do a bit of new writing through all of this, both pieces of Flash Fiction during the weekly challenge. It’s been fun experimenting with dark fiction/horror and exploring some background for a future story. I have one more piece of that story to write and then revise to be one complete short instead of three connected pieces of flash. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that yet, but it’s been a very fun and useful exercise.

The deadline for the Writers of the Future contest is coming up at the end of the month. I’m going to make a batch of revisions to one of my stories and send it off to that. I wasn’t sure if that contest was worthwhile, but I’ve done a bit of research and spoken to a few people about it and it looks like the general consensus is that it is a good thing

I’ve been switching back and forth between new stories and revising old. At some point it’s time to either toss it in a drawer because I don’t know how else to fix it or send it out into the world and hope it sticks somewhere. I’ve got a pretty clear idea of what’s broken and how to fix it, so I’m going to make one more pass at the current drafts.

I occasionally join in the weekly Flash Fiction challenge with the good folks over at Absolute Write. Every Sunday, a prompt is given and you have ninety minutes to write something inspired by the prompt. It’s a fun exercise, and a good way to experiment with different styles/genres.

This particular piece is based on the prompt “root”. I did shop this around to a few magazines that took humor like this. I did collect three rejections, one being a “near miss”. Rather than shop this around, I decided to post it here.

Read now: Holy Nepotism

David Louis Edelman has a nice post about line editing up on DeepGenre today. It’s worth a read.

September begins my monthly subscription drive. I bought a subscription to Fantasy & Science Fiction (F&SF) today.

My original choice was going to be Subterranean Magazine. I couldn’t find a subscription option. As it turns out, the print magazine will be discontinued after the 8th issue. Disappointing news. I picked up a copy of Issue #5 a few months ago at a Borders. It contains “Mazer in Prison” by Orson Scott Card, one of the most memorable stories I’ve read recently.

F&SF was my next choice and just as good. It’s a staple in my reading diet and is at the top of the markets I want to be published in.

John Joseph Adams and Doug Cohen will be doing their second annual Slushapalooza on Hour of the Wolf, a weekly radio show on WBAI in New York City.

This is the first I’ve heard of the show, but looking at their line-up of past and future guests I’ll be tuning in (online).

I am a pack rat. I collect random pieces of computer gear and electronics that I never needed, never used or will never use again.

We’ve been spending an hour a day going through the wasteland formerly known as the basement, throwing away junk, sorting, organizing, and cleaning. Eventually, we’ll hire someone to finish the basement and have a nice area for gaming.

Yesterday I took out all of the garbage we’ve bagged in the past week (12+ giant bags), including a dead television and an old couch.

One of the dogs woke us at 3:30AM this morning. I jumped out of bed to see what the fuss is about and I saw someone stopped in front of our house, in front of the garbage. The dog must have startled them. When I got to the window, they were jumping in the car and sped away.

My first thought was that they were interested in the TV. It was a 27″ TV — big, with no obvious signs of damage. No one in their right mind would have been interested in the couch. What didn’t occur to me, until Dena pointed it out, is that the TV was too big to fit in the car. So what, exactly, were they doing looking at my trash in the middle of the night?

Some friends have suggested identity fraud and I’ll admit that does make a bit of sense. Digging through someone’s trash in the middle of the night would be the safest way to do it. Luckily there wasn’t anything at the curb I’d worry about but it does make me seriously consider buying a shredder for personal documents that we happen to throw away.

This week felt like it would never end. Long days and short nights, each filled with rain and heat. We managed to avoid any more weather-related damage, thankfully.

Not much progress word count-wise, but I have figured out the shape of the story. It’s my first attempt at writing from a first person point of view (since school). It feels like it will work best for this story. Time will tell if I’m right.