Okay, I just finished Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass. I found it slower than the first three, but more engrossing and exhausting. Each book so far has gotten steadily larger, about one hundred pages each subsequent book, so this one was about seven hundred pages. Hence, exhausting. Took me longer to read this one. I felt submerged in young Roland's world and enjoyed it and I didn't even miss the quest for the tower. But I'm glad we're back on track just the same.

I should be getting my package from Amazon tomorrow or Saturday (hopefully tomorrow) and I can get started on the fifth book, Wolves Of The Calla. In the same box I'll also have books six and seven. Hurry, hurry, hurry . . .

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I need to make a correction to yesterday's entry. Ximena pointed out to me that our ceiling really is seven feet tall. What do I know? Numbers and I don't often see eye to eye. Besides, anything above my own five-seven is tall to me and six feet can easily blend into seven. It's still a low ceiling compared to other modern apartments.

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I got one long, hand-written rejection letter from the editors of Tales Of The Unanticipated. Wow, I've never known an editor that handwrites an rejection letter.

Anyhoo, the story was the third of three I had sent them during their reading period. The other two were rejected, fairly quick, one after the other. Took awhile to get the third one back. "He Angles, She Refracts" was close, one of the seventy survivors from the first cut. They would look at a rewrite (no guarentees, of course)for the next reading period but they go on to say the story is well-done enought to sell someplace else as is.

This is good to know. This story has been circulating for a long time and is running out of markets. Their comments on improving the story were good--basically kick it up a notch--but at this point the story is what it is. I'm more than happy to gather what I learn from what I've done and carry it to the next story. I'll probably just send it out again instead of messing with it.

The letter came at a good time. I've been feeling glum and untalented and overwhelmed at getting the novel done, as in Can I Pull It Off? Now I feel good. Now I feel I can do something. That might be a strange reaction from a rejection letter but this just tells me to keep going. I can do things, perhaps sell stories, if I just finish them and send them.