June 5: The good news: received my contributor's copy of Such a Pretty Face today.

Not so good ... during the last week, got a 20-day rejection from The Urbanite, a 25-day rejection from SpaceWays Weekly, and a 24-day rejection from Byline (with a very nice note). Time to send out mss again, probably the last time before leaving town.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! to all those who've written to express their support in the last few days. It is incredibly appreciated.

Had a wonderful time over the weekend picking my "picks." The quality of fiction on the web just keeps increasing. There's no reason to regard on-line publication as inherently inferior to print publication anymore.

Theater reviews: Saw some Irish thing at the Guthrie and walked out at intermission, because if I didn't, I was going to fall asleep and maybe snore. Really, really bad. Saw Dracula at Park Square and enjoyed it, especially the staging -- genuinely spooky at times. Saw Paul Zindel's Marigolds (the whole title is much longer) at Theatre in the Round and can't help comparing it unfavorably to The Glass Menagerie. The mother character did and said almost everything, but the protagonist was the younger daughter -- kind of a weird way to write it. Also, I pretty much "got" the mother in the first scene, but she went on and on and on over the same stuff throughout the play, and it got old. Maybe if the actress had played the part more quietly, only letting a little bitterness leaking out, at first, then let the energy build toward the end, it would have been better.

Clarion: I'm mostly packed. Last night I started feeling some of that "only a few days 'til Christmas" excitement. Haven't felt that feeling for a long time.

May 30: 51-day rejection from Millenium; 60-day rejection from Writers of the Future. I'd really gotten my hopes up for WotF. Feeling very discouraged.

Doug and I went for a walk the other day, and a squirrel ran up to Doug and tried to climb up his leg. I never thought his legs were hairy enough to resemble bark, but I guess he looked like a tree to this squirrel. Fortunately he was wearing shorts, and when he jerked his leg, startled, the squirrel fell off. Another squirrel scolded us loudly from the branch above. Maybe it was just freaked out by what its friend did.

Clarion: Went shopping today. Got a 5000 BTU, Whirlpool air conditioner at Menard's for $133; got a Canon Bubble Jet printer for $67. Even insect repellant was on sale. I felt good, until I came home and looked at the mail. This workshop is probably a complete waste of my time and money. The only thing I'll learn is that I'm not a writer. [wallow, wallow, wallow, woe is me ...]

May 24: Yesterday, an encouraging 1-day rejection from Altair; today, an encouraging 34-day rejection with substantial comments from The Doom of Camelot anthology. I realize that I've started seeing every rejection as a Sign that I'm unworthy of Clarion. What if I go to Clarion and nothing happens with my writing, because the seeds of wisdom are falling on barren soil?

Mourning dove visiting our yard now. Teeny-weeny baby bunny bounces all over the place -- Rottie obsessed all over again and not letting me sleep.

May 22: Today's mail brought my check from gothic.net for my story "Unblinking." They pay four cents a word; that's the highest pay rate I've ever received for my fiction. Pretty exciting! Especially as a reviewer dissed the tale big-time a couple of years after it came out in print. Fortunately, I didn't see the review until after it was up at gothic.net and getting positive reader response. :-) Never, ever, ever take reviews seriously -- unless they're good, of course!

Yesterday, got a 19-day rejection from Electric Wine on what would have been a reprint; they didn't care for my trope. (Unsure what a "trope" is? Use the handy dictionary link to the left to find out. Hee!)

Writing: I keep plunking away at rewriting this near-future fantasy about ice dancing. It's not hard: I've just been distracted and tired.

Clarion: Just realized there are only two weekends between me and my departure. AAAARRRGHH!!!!! What am I doing?!?! I'm a talentless twerp! I can't write! Not well! I should, like, get a job or something! How can I take six weeks out of my life to do something I'm so bad at?!?! [ahem, panic attack over]

Loved the season finale of the "X-Files," and I didn't think I would. Now I'm actually looking forward to next season. For the record, I think Mulder is the father and that it was conceived in the usual way. Now, what's Scully's brother going to say when he finds out that no-good partner of hers has knocked her up and then left for parts unknown? Oh well, at least Mulder's last flight was cost-effective for the Bureau. [giggle]

May 20: This week brought a 15-day rejection from Not One of Us, a 12-day rejection from Pulp Eternity, and an 8-day rejection from F&SF. This is good -- means I've gotten stuff into the mail again.

That bird I saw earlier wasn't a woodpecker. I don't know what it was. Can't find it anywhere in my Birds of North America. For Christmas, or earlier, I want Thayer's BoNA on CD-ROM. With that, I can plug in the season and location of the sighting, plus a few features of the bird, and it will search for me. Did see a lot of killdeer while walking the dog near the lake the other day -- quite striking, and not at all shy.

A couple of days ago, Doug spotted a *teeny* baby bunny in the front yard. He called me over to see it. Then the Rottie saw it, too, from the bedroom window. Now she's obsessed again. This bunny was about the size of my hand from nose to tail, but perfect in its teeniness.

Writing-ish: Heard Octavia Butler on NPR's "Talk of the Nation." She was extremely cool.

Clarion: Finished Delany's The Einstein Intersection -- fabulous book! Next up, as a break from the literary, deeply symbolic prose, is some sword-and-sorcery by Gregory Frost.

May 16: Full moon hanging in my office window: perfection. Saw a species of woodpecker yesterday--really amazing markings. BB still hanging out in the yard, but Rottie not quite as obsessed. Sparrows figured out the squirrel-proof feeder -- yay!!! Spouse has a job interview tomorrow, so I'm crossing my toes for him (it's hard to type with crossed fingers [grin].)

Survived five panels and a reading at MarsCon. Very fun convention. Grew in attendance from last year I think. Seven tracks of programming. Good discussions.

Have lost four or five pounds since eliminating most sugared pop from my diet. Long walks (12 miles yesterday!), weight lifting, and fewer empty calories seem to be doing the trick pretty painlessly.

Writing-ish: Heard Ray Bradbury on MPR today (his talk is or will be at the website in RealAudio). He's great!

Clarion: Purchased a super-soaker(tm) today. I'm ready! Also, reading Sean Stewart's Resurrection Man. Wow. Not a single wrong note anywhere. Works on multiple levels, each perfectly reflecting the other. It's a full moon of a book.

May 13: Received an acceptance for the article, contingent on cutting 700 words. Am checking with my co-author to see if that's okay by her.

Baby Bunny soooooo cuuuuuute! Our Rottie is obsessed, absolutely obsessed, with BB's presence. Also have a mouse living in our backyard--its tunnel opens where I get a great view of its comings and goings from my office window. Fledgling birdies showed up this week, all fluffy and fluzzy and demanding of their parents. Will I get any writing done, or will I just look out the window?

Writing: Starting the re-write of another story I first wrote last fall, per feedback from my crit group. I've just tackled the easy fixes so far, but it seems to be going well.

Pretty soon I have to head back over to MarsCon, as my first panel today is at 3 p.m., and then I've got panels until 10 p.m. I'm going to see if someone who has a room at the hotel can key me into the exercise room and then let me take a shower. I've hardly worked out at all this week, but I'm sore anyway. Go figure. Maybe it's pre-Clarion muscle tension. Does that burn calories?

May 8: Baby bunny is still hanging around! I got a couple rolls of film developed today. The photos I took of bunny? Completely fuzzy. This must be a magical bunny who blurs any photo that tries to steal its soul. :)

Am totally po'd at my local phone company, USWest. Actually, I have to say that their customer reps, who get to handle the damage their sales reps do, are excellent. That bleepity-bleep sales guy though. Scum of the earth! Sold me cellular service (after, I suspect, lying to me about the status of the service I'd actually called about) and totally misrepresented the cost. Got the first bill a few days ago. No way (1) was I going to pay it or (2) purchase products or services from this company ever again. Anyway, they're crediting my account for all the charges and not charging me any cancellation fees, so all's well that ends well. Doug found a deal on cellular that gets us exactly what we need, so we'll probably go with that.

I haven't been posting much about exercise lately. Still going at it. Latest routine is *long* walks/jogs with weight-lifting and occasional stepping and swimming to mix things up.

Writing: Am going to finish the re-write on this story tonight. Do or die! This isn't nearly as hard as I'm making it. Just because the story deals with hard science, I've built it up in my mind as a Tremendously Difficult Thing (a TDT). And it's not. It's a good story. My crit group responded very positively. I'm just clearing up a few things in the beginning and making the characters work harder for their victory at the end. This is *not* a TDT!

Clarion: I've written out my packing list -- I think everything will fit into my super-sized duffel bag -- and am reading a second book by Charnas. Expect to receive the packet with all the info about accommodations, etc. tomorrow or Wednesday.

May 5: Received a positive response to an article query -- keeping fingers crossed!

Think I saw a chipping sparrow in the Bird Cafe a couple of days ago. Baby Bunny is still a regular visitor to our yard. Mowed for the third time this spring today. It's hot, and the grass is growing like crazy.

Saw Marat-Sade (that's the short version of the title) by Peter Weiss at Theatre in the Round tonight. Very well done. Stressful, because I really did feel as though I was in an early nineteenth-century insane asylum. Challenging but not inaccessible script. Felt like a quick once-over of all my French Revolution courses from long ago.

Writing: Busy researching zoo architecture: trying to find some technique used in designing zoos to prevent the spread of viruses, that will translate into a computer network to be used by AI entities. So far I'm learning a lot about virology, including a lot that I learned back in high school biology and had forgotten, but not much yet about zoological park design.

Clarion prep: Reading Delany's Atlantis: Three Tales. I enjoy his turns of phrase.

May 3: My story "Unblinking," first published in the Heliocentric Net's Stigmata anthology in 1997, is up at gothic.net.

Saw a different kind of sparrow in the "Bird Cafe" a couple of days ago. I'm terrible at noticing the details I need to for identification, but I think it might have been a white-crowned sparrow. For sure it's a member of the finch family. A blue jay visited this morning, and a pair of cardinals performed courtship rituals in the backyard yesterday. The house finches and black-capped chickadees are regular visitors this year. Saw baby bunny again yesterday -- sooooo cuuuute!!!!

Writing stuff: Put a bunch more stories in the mail yesterday. Still have a bunch to go, but I figure "I did good" for now. Also, sent out an article query. Received positive feedback from my sharpest/best critiquer on a story I was going to get a parrot for (so the ms could line the bottom of the cage), so that made me feel good. Been taking a lot of super-long walks, and I find I solve plot problems after about four miles. Need to prep for all my Marscon panels -- that's the weekend after this one already! How did we get to May so soon???

Clarion preparations: read The Between by Tananarive Due -- very good! Next up, Atlantis: Three Tales by Chip Delany.