Words of the Barely-Published

The Popinjay's Daughter is finally out.

It'll be on the front page of Beneath Ceaseless Skies for the next two weeks.

I'm still somewhat in shock. Something I wrote is finally out in the wild. Where I have no real control over it ever again. What have I done!?

Eek! :)

I went on vacation, and then I came back and edits and $payingJob ate my brain. (And other things too.) Edits are hard work. Edits where I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do about things are even worse. The fixing of Easter Lilies is proving to be just about as difficult as I expected, though I know it will be a better story in the end.

However, the second story set in the House of the Mad Russian gained about 1000 words this evening, and more importantly, gained a solid end. Finally knowing what I was doing at the end really helped, and after a lovely celebratory dinner with the Fabulous Margaret I came home and proceeded to blat out on the order of 1100 words.

There is one scene left to write, and then BRAWL can have it and tell me it sucks. But compared to all the pain and suffering I went through trying to figure out what to do about fixing The Popinjay's Daughter to make it suck less, I think this one will suck in new and hopefully interesting ways.

And for once, I hope to have my BRAWL piece done early so I can go back to my blasted editing.

In the light of day, I'm coping a bit better with the rejection from yesterday. I've sent The Popinjay's Daughter off in search of another locale, and checked over my writing page of other stuff I should be doing.

I need to work on rewrites. Blah.

Well, it's not New Year's yet. I don't have to make resolutions just yet.

There it is. Poot to you, F&SF! Time to send this someplace it might actually get accepted. Fly, my little story! Get publishers to like you! Ply them with strong drink if you have to! :)

No rejection letter yet. Probably tomorrow.

(Of course no rejection letter yet - I've already figured out where I'm sending it next!)

First pass at the rewrite is complete. Yay! It clocks in at just under 3100 words, and there are one or two transitions I want to work out. Also, I think I need a sympathetic snippet in there, just to show that one of the protagonists isn't a completely lost cause.

But I have some space to play with now that I know it's only about 3K. And I'm not unhappy with it. I like the first version better, but in some ways, the first version is one of those stories that I wrote for myself. This one's a story written for a rather broader audience.

I'll continue to try to believe that as I begin collecting rejection letters on it. (I need a list of places to submit these suckers. If I get Popinjay's Daughter done, then I'm going to have three complete, edited short stories done...and I will have no idea where to send any of them.)