A Day in My Life

To my new followers, thank you! Hopefully I'll be entertaining enough to keep you around. If not, you can leave. Promise I'll only cry a little. :-)

In personal news: Evan and I found an apartment! We're signing the lease tomorrow. Funny enough, it's actually an apartment that some friends of ours lived in while we were all in college there; I really liked it then, and I'm thrilled to be moving in to it now. It's probably twice the size of where we currently live and within walking distance to work/school for Evan, which means we're going to be saving a ton of money once he's not commuting 80 miles a day.

I'm going to have an office!

Well, technically I have to share it with Evan, but still. We've had our desks shoved into corners in our living room for 2 years now. I can't imagine what it'll be like to have our very own room dedicated to our computering ways. We even bought a 17-inch TV at Goodwill yesterday to go in there (for 18 bucks!) because Evan can't function without a TV while he plays on his computer. :-)

First month's rent is free, which means that we can start moving now. Evan has Spring Break next week; I think we're going to get the moving truck and do the monster move then, and in the meantime he's going to shuttle boxes up every day when he goes to work.

Of course, this means I'm going to be here packing. Ugh.


In writing news:

Well, not much to report here. Ever since I finished my short story, I haven't written a thing.
I've had 3 people give me feedback, including our very own DL, from Cruising Altitude. His critique was insightful, thoughtful, and very helpful! I'm sure you all follow him already, but if for some reason you don't, you need to! He's a great addition to the blogosphere.

I'm still researching magazines that I might want to submit the story to once it's all pretty and polished up. I've been taking notes from Duotrope and am getting a good idea of where I want to start. Just for kicks and giggles, I wrote down the acceptance/rejection rates of the ones I'm interested in. And yes, most of these are speculative fiction mags, because that's what I figure my story is closest in genre to, so some of the names are pretty funky! all following stats are from Duotrope

• Kaleidotrope: 18.52% acceptance, 74.07% rejection 
• On Spec: 6.25% acceptance, 90.63 rejection
• Three-Lobed Burning Eye: 2.99% acceptance, 89.5% rejection
• GUD: Greatest Uncommon Denominator: 1.35% acceptance, 95.18% rejection
• Shimmer: 1.07% acceptance, 97.38% rejection 
• Weird Tales*: 0.94% acceptance, 94.38% rejection
• Strange Horizons: 0.75% acceptance, 97.01% rejection

I forgot which one this was, but I think the lowest acceptance rate I saw was 0.28%. Pretty encouraging, huh?

*Weird Tales is my #1 pick, kinda like submitting to The New Yorker or Harper's for spec fiction. Mostly because my fantasy idol Ray Bradbury got his start there. :-)

Anyway, the lower the acceptance rate, the more I want to submit. Is that totally masochistic or what? I'm excited about starting the submitting process, even though I still have some revision to go.


Simon's post yesterday mentions writing erotica for $$. I checked out the website and was instantly intrigued! Especially by the link called Smutters Lounge! I doubt I'd share any of this with my mom, but I have no problem writing erotica. Maybe it's my calling...

EDIT: I was looking around on the ERWA website and ran across this article. It may be in an erotica forum, but trust me--it has meaning for all of us.


Blogging might be touch-and-go for a couple weeks, but let's be serious: I really doubt it. Just covering my butt either way.

Ciao, February! Aloha, March!