I have been desperately trying to balance client-work with my own, and have discovered that until the 24th of this month, I’ll need to just shelve my own. I don’t think that’s going to cause problems with my final count for the year with NaNoWriYe, as I’m hoping to use October and November to get caught up. If I can put in 30k on the warm-up, and another 50k during October, plus the 50k in November, I should fly through it all. I think, since that will leave December to push the final bit.

I haven’t verified for August yet, and July was a bust as I’ve posted before. Well, mostly a bust, because I did have that 5k or so from finishing Samhain’s Call that Trev and Mari had in their hot little hands..hehehe. If they hadn’t have had the file, I’d have been 0 for June and July.

Meanwhile though, word came down that some of the markets I’ve submitted to in the last year have closed down. This frees up those pieces, and I’ve been looking for new markets for them. Retsej at IOHP posted a new one the other night, from the Teeming Brain blog. I’ve shipped off the oft-shipped “Faith, Lies & Videotape” to them. The last two editors really seemed to like the piece, but it didn’t fit with the mags they’re producing. Both of those markets have invited me to continue submitting – in fact, this is what Black Ink Horror had to say:

This tale grabbed me from the beginning and held on to my attention until the end.

I only had three spots to fill in issue #0, and several stories from which to choose. In the end, it came down to which story better fit the mood I was looking for in the third story.

…I enjoyed your work a great deal, and I do hope that you submit again

The letter started out just as great too..LOL but I’m saving that for my own personal ego-boost the next time I get one of the “Sorry, can’t use this.” type of rejections. And yes, I have seen rejections with those four words, and ONLY those four words.

I think that covers anything needing to be said tonight. There’ll be some new links and whatnot up over the weekend, I hope..and some need to be changed as both Apex and Mari have moved to other spots. I *will* get caught up!