Yes, having sent a story out last night — the final, much-reworked product of what was once known as “The Crystal Methuselah” and which is now known as “Cai and her Ten Thousand Husbands” — I’ve thrown aside all plans and provisional notions, including my plan for a second Machines of Death story — to draft, in a whirlwind, the first half of a new ghost story. I didn’t get to it until sometime after midnight, mind, and I’d spent hours cleaning, tidying, rearranging furniture to ease things in the next week, as Lime may have to crash here while …

Sold my first story today! Pahwakhe, to Fantasy magazine. See here. (Amusingly, several people I know contacted me to congratulate me, before I even saw the acceptance email. I was sleeping and found my email inbox full.) I’m pleased. It’s encouraging, because up to now, I’ve mostly been writing in a void and sending off stories into a void. I get positive feedback from friends, classmates, like that, but until someone buys something, you know, it’s just friends being nice. Anyway, there you go. Late 2007 will see the publication of my first sale, a spooky little (read: very short) …

I’m still working on a new title, and it needs a little sweeping up and so on, but  the rewrite is basically complete, and I did some hard-core editing, and I also got it down to under 4000 words, which is quite a feat considering it was 5,000 words just the other day. And what was lost? Far as I can tell, only fat and gristle. I split a scene into two pieces, moved a few things around, but mostly it was just repetitions, verbiage, that kind of junk. I am quite pleased and feel like I’m getting a better …

It’s a small anthology, and it doesn’t pay much, but the concept for Machine of Death, which one of my Clarion West classmates (Ian) posted to our crit listserv, really grabbed my imagination, so much so that within the first 24 hours, two full story ideas have come into my mind. I’ve finished drafting one ~3500-word story–a dark little almost-comedy about yakuza, revenge, and language barriers–and I’ve got one more in mind, a piece involving MSF, which I’ll probably start drafting today or tomorrow. After that, it’ll be back to my regularly scheduled writing, since, it seems, I am finally …

Let’s see. I’ve: I completed a tiny 300-word story for the Escape Pod 300 Word Flash contest. I don’t think I really stand a chance of winning, or even placing, but it was fun and I think I’ll rework it a little to send out. The concept worked a lot better than I imagined, though I’m not sure I could sustain it successfully for even 500 more words. I also (finally!) have completed a draft of what’s turned out to be another flash piece, the long-awaited “The Egan Thief”. My original plan was for it to be more like 5000 …

As Caroline says, all the cool kids were doing it, and it might be a nice yearly ritual. Let’s see: In 2007, I made 12 submissions. I got 5 rejections, 4 personal and 1 form (though I’m told it’s semi-personal). Everything else is still out, though one of them is on hold at Interzone till sometime soon. I expect bigger things in 2007, but as always, we’ll see how it pans out. I’ll post again in about a year, I guess.