Starting with the good news. My short story, "Crab Apple", has sold to Realms of Fantasy. This is the second sale I've made to RoF, and I'm delighted by it. Oddly, this story was originally written for a young adult anthology. The editor rejected it because she felt it was aimed at too young readers. Steph suggests that adult readers are probably more open to reading stories from the point of view of a child than young adult readers are. She might well be right on that. When you're a teenager, the last thing you want to been seen reading is something that is too young for you. Of course, it might just be down to the individual editor's taste. Now I need to write another short story to fill the vacancy.

I'm now 2/3 of the way through my latest children's novel, and I've hit the 20,000 word point. It's exactly where I planned so far. There's a nice big climax at this point, and we have a pretty good idea of what's going on. Now all the characters have to do is work out a way to get through the awful situation they're in.

The other good news is that my application for Active SFWA membership that has been missing in action for the last six months appears to have been found and approved, so I get to be a member of the grown-ups club. I'm not sure what it really brings me as I don't live in America, but it's one of those nice milestones. I think the next milestone to aim for is to get an agent for my children's novels.

Oh yeah, and my teeth have finally stopped hurting after the wisdom tooth extraction and associated filling. 12 days until the next extraction.

The bad news is that I'm off work with a nasty cold. This is particularly annoying because I was in the middle of a really good project management course. I toughed it out through yesterday, but by the time I got home I was really out of it and couldn't do anything all evening. Sitting at home, I'm feeling a lot better, but I made the mistake of moving around too much earlier and felt dizzy again. I'll probably go in tomorrow anyway, just because I'm way behind on work.

I didn't get the job I interviewed for on Monday. I'm not too upset about it. It was in a really grim little town surrounded by wasteland and looking out to an enormous, corrugated iron mall. The job itself would probably have been okay, but there was nowhere to go outside the building. Also, I'd have had to buy a car and we can't afford that, and there was no pension for the job. I haven't built up any pension, except for over the last year, and I don't want to continue on like that. I don't want to work forever. On the positive side, I've been offered an extension to my contract at my current job until July, and I've been asked to write a job role (without any guarantees that I would get the job, that it would be created, etc etc).