Great News

I got a real booster of an email this morning:

Sorry for the impersonal email, but it's much quicker to bcc everyone than to send a bunch of individual emails.

I just wanted you to know that your story is still under serious consideration for an upcoming issue of Flash Fiction Online. I don't want to make anyone too optimistic -- we'll only be able to accept about 25% of the people who are receiving this email -- but I wanted to make sure you knew that we hadn't forgotten about you or lost your story in the mail.

Regards,
Jake Freivald
Editor
Flash Fiction Online

I know I don't have a one in four chance of getting published.  This isn't gambling, after all.  It'll measure up to the other stories, or it won't.  

There's an additional artistic factor.  Many editors end up with conscious or unconscious themes to the stories they choose for a particular issue, even if it's 'I want all these stories to be completely different from each other.'  Every year that I coordinated the writer's workshop for OryCon, I had only one year where I had trouble grouping a story with another (I put the writers into pairs.)  For whatever reason I had one Mech Warrior story and no other robot story or military SF or franchise story, but I did have a pro author with experience in writing for Mech Warrior (what are the odds? heh) and so I made a quirky group with that pro and another pro that had deep experience in short stories.  The other submitting author had a short fantasy that was about the same writing level as the other submitting author in the group.    

The point is that fiction writers and their stories tend to come together in a serendipitous fashion, and serendipity may not be on my side this time.  Still, I'm happy and honored to have made it this far.  Publication with Flash Fiction Online would be a real feather in my cap.  By the way, if you don't read them, do.  I never have enough time to read, which makes Flash Fiction Online particularly wonderful.  

Mr. Freivald didn't have to send out the update, and I hope he didn't get a bunch of emails back (except quick thank yous, although even those might be considered clutter) pestering or abusing him.  You'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't, at what people send to editors given the slightest excuse, which they take as some form of provocation.   Anyway, it was very nice of him to take the time.  The email certainly made my day.  Now, on to writing, and tiling, and cleaning, and all that.  I'm sure my work will be particularly flashy today.  

Because I can't leave well enough alone

I entered a first page contest on Nathan Bransford's blog page with the first page of my WIP Mayhem (I've rewritten this thing how many times now?  Maybe this time I'll get it right.)  Good move, I think, but then I did something a little crazy.  I offered to critique first pages for anyone who wanted advice.  Not that I'm anyone in particular, but sometimes it's good to hear feedback from someone who has no vested interest in you whatsoever.  I could get swamped, or I could get a whole lot of nothing.  I'll post the critiques of those works when their writers give me permission to do so right here on Jestablog.  This could go nowhere, or it could be a whole lot of fun, or I could start drinking heavily and sobbing shortly after I check my email.  There were over 600 submissions to the contest.  Good luck to us all, but especially me, because this is my blog and la la la I can wish myself luck if I want to and you can't stop me nyah nyah nyah!

If you're from the contest and you came to my webpage, you're also welcome to submit your page in my comments section if you'd rather do it that way than sending email.  Also, you get a blessing from the writing googalah.  Tseeng tseeng!  Now you have extra luck in the contest.  

Too many good things

After a feverish few days of putting together a bid to chair OryCon 30, Kai Jones aka snippy and I managed to dodge becoming chair and co-chair. If that makes no sense, bear in mind that very few who have taken on a major role in the convention do so again. Even more rare is the individual who chooses to chair a second time. I've seen aspects of the job, and they're no fun. So why in the world would I go for it? Because I knew of only one other bid, and that came in after I decided to put in a bid myself. When I first made the decision no one had stepped up, and if no one steps up, there's a serious possibility that there will be no OryCon.

Meanwhile, the writer's workshop deadline arrived and went, and along with that came the usual mad flurry of emails. I've spent more time in front of the computer today than I have in ages, and none of it has been spent writing. That twists my panties into a knot, but hey, I signed up for this. I have no one to blame but myself.

Which brings me to the third situation: easystreet, grr, has changed its email system. If you're reading this update my email to kamila@easystreet.net and pass the word along. There are some fabulous perks associated with this, the best being that I now have spam filtration and I haven't got a single piece of spam all day. The downside, major downside, is that I don't seem to be able to send out email, and for whatever reason Rory's email doesn't work at all despite my duplicating the changes I made to my account. In order to fully appreciate this problem consider that I can't email everyone in my address book to update their address books with my new email address because I CAN'T SEND OUT EMAIL!

So if you've emailed me and you haven't heard back, well, that's why. I've most likely gotten your email and have a response queued up in my Outbox.

I haven't found the end of my rope yet, but it seems like I have a lot of rope above me and I'm pretty sure there's not much left. Hopefully all these good things going on will eventually settle down and I can get back to what I love the most, well, second most--writing a good story. Okay, fourth most. Maybe even eighth most, because I love my dogs, even if they're playing that stupid you can't get me through the fence game *again*. And I love my cats too.

But you get the idea.