Whew! I finally got some proofreading done. I’m now about to send four five stories out. Here are the titles (with the original titles included for those who have read or critted them in the past):
- “Cai and Her Ten Thousand Husbands” (originally “The Crystal Methuselah,” 2006)
- “Iblis’ Devotion”(originally “Iblis’ Desire,” 2006)
- “Lester Young and the Jupiter’s Moons’ Blues”(first draft Clarion West 2006 Week 6, same title)
- “Solvjaynghi’s Christmas Wish” (originally, long ago, “The Plea From Factory Unit #5”, ca. 2002)
- “Empty of Words, the Page” (originally”Professor Whitney’s Resignation,” ca. 2000)
Tonight I’ll be entering the edits for two one more stories, in the hope that I may even get to send them out tomorrow along with those above: one, a rewrite of a long-ago story originally titled “Professor Whitney’s Resignation” and the other, the much blathered-about Korean superheroes novella.
I got the revisions of “Empty of Words…” and I am plain done for the day. I’m going to go relax, watch an episode of The Sopranos (I found season 2 in stock somewhere the other day, finally), choose places to submit these stories first, write a couple of cover letters, and make some banana bread. I can always do the edits on my newly retitled Korean superheroes story, “Wonjjang and the Madman of Pyongyang” in a day or two, as I’m not sure where I’ll be sending it anyway — it looks like most of the markets I want to target will be taken up with one submission anyway.
Fingers crossed on all counts. (And a couple of toes, too.)
And for those who playfully joke that I’m a machine, it’s far from true. The story about Professor Whitney is one I began back in 1999 or 2000, and most of these have been relatively ready for months now. It’s just getting up off the backside to do the final edit, proofread, and mail them out that has kept them in the “ready to send out” pile for so long.