[Nothing to do with the subject of the post, but I just found out that one of the most colossaly talented--but up until now, unpublished--writers I know just made her first sale, and to a pretty cool place. Probably not bloggable until details clear up, but hearty congrats. You know who you are.]

Last night I went to a second meeting of the local writers group (attached to the South Florida Science Fiction Society, pronounced "Sisyphus"), and the first one where anything of mine was being critted.

I submitted "Sing, Goddess" for crit this time, since I got that close-but-no-cigar rejection from Strange Horizons on it (granted, being an e-mail, there was really no way they could have attached an actual cigar, nice as that would have been) and, though it's been through the Clarion class a couple of times, it seemed like it might be a good idea to have one more look at it from a set of eyes that hadn't actually seen it a bunch of times before, to catch any outstanding issues before I sent it anywhere else. Plus, if at all possible, I'd like to fool them into thinking that I'm an OK writer, or at least capable of such, before unleashing some of my really shitty stories on them later.

As background, I should mention that I came back from Austin with enormous amounts of con-crud, leading up to actually being home sick from my afternoon class on Wendesday since I was coughing and sniffling and generally making a nuiscance of myself so much during my morning class, and I was in that special kind of groggy that you get when you can't really sleep but you desperately need to lie down and think about nothing.

Which meant that (a) I didn't do any of the crits until the last minute, and (b) although I was feeling better for the most part, with just a few residual symptoms, the entire time my story was being critted I was trying not to cough on anything. At the end, Judi Castro did the Jewish momma thing and insisted that I be given a ride home asap so I wouldn't relapse.

Still, it was good.

Adam-Troy Castro, who's the pro-level person in the group (most of what he's published have been media tie-ins and novelizations and the like, but he's written stories that have been nominated for Hugo's and Nebula's) made some very positive but mixed comments, and a couple of other people claimed that they thought it was better than a lot of stuff they had seen in F&SF and Asimov's.

All of which was good for the ego. More importantly, there were a few silly line-editing things that someone eluded all previous passes that were caught, which I feel much better about sending it out again now, and no one had any massively negative comments. There were a few reservations, but no new information, so I think the consensus is that it's good to go.

Thank God, since I don't think I'm emotionally capable of re-thinking large story aspects at this point.

But anyway, it was good. To top it off, while I was in Ft. Lauderdale (having dinner at the Mexican restaurant at the beach...since the last bus from Miami gets in a few hours before the meeting, I kind of have to eat in Ft. Lauderdale) when the TV in the corner announced (first I had heard of it) that Allen had conceded in Virginia, thus making it official that the Republicans lost the Senate as well as the House. So I came to the meeting with a huge shit-eating grin, shared by everyone there.

Don't get me wrong. The Democrats are the more moderate wing of corporate America in the best of times, and they slid to the right considerably with some of their candidates this time. So legislatively, this is nothing to write home about.

But....it's a huge symbolic humiliation of the Bush administration.

And *that* gives me a happy.