The rewrite request worked! Last night, Aeon accepted my short story "Foxwoman". That makes my second sale this weekend to a spec fic magazine.

I am very happy, and also in shock.

(I also have one other piece of really excellent and exciting short-story writing news, but for depressingly practical business reasons, I can't write about it here. Gaah. But it has been a very good weekend.)

Isn't it funny how dry spells burst all at once, in a downpour?

Of course, if this follows a typical pattern, I now won't sell anything for the next 8 months. But in the meantime, it's been a really wonderful weekend. Right now, an apple strudel is baking in the oven, and in an hour, we'll be going out to the cafe to celebrate last night's sale.

And now here is my embarrassing secret: every single time I make a sale, I have a ritual I have to follow: I put on my tiara (the gorgeous Austrian-crystal one from our wedding) and I do a Happy Dance with Nika and Patrick. If anyone ever saw me through the window, I would die. But it is really, really fun.

***
Last night we watched the movie Twelve Angry Men, with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb. It was a funny time to watch it, because I'd just read a review of the Irish filmmaker Ken Loach's new movie, which apparently (according to the reviewer) is let down by too-long scenes of nothing but talk. Not having seen the film myself, I nodded along, thinking, oh yes, that does sound like a problem.

Well. That can be a problem...but it sure doesn't have to be. Twelve Angry Men is set in a single room, where twelve nameless men debate justice for an hour and a half. And it turned out to be one of the most powerful movies I've ever seen. Not in an arty, "worthy" way - it was just completely viscerally compelling, and anything but dated. I could imagine exactly those arguments going on in a courthouse now. It's one of the reasons why our system of justice can be so terrifying, and why it can also work.

I'm really glad I watched it.