I have gooseflesh. I got up today to find an e-mail from Carla at Realms of Fantasy. She’s passing my story “The Rising” up to Shawna. In part, because it’s a 9/11 story, and Carla happened to read it this morning. Coincidence? The universe conspiring? You be the judge. Normally Carla doesn’t tell authors when she passes their mss up, but she told me because it was so eerie.

Normally, I send my little tales out in the world and forget about them until I check my master list and see follow-ups are in order, or rejections (and occasionally acceptances) wander back my way. But right now I have two stories that have made the first cut (“The Rising”, and “Soulsearching” at S&S21) and one that’s made a second cut (“Matchmaker” at ASIM), not to mention a couple of erotica pieces that are being held. This makes it harder not to fret.

But it also makes me want to write more. I can tell my writing has gotten better (which gives me hope that it will continue to). It was a slow realisation, but there you have it. I wrote “The Rising” at OCW last spring—it was our 10K assignment. I had no idea I could write 10K in 3 days, especially without an idea until the assignment was actually given. It’s what K&D and a host of other successful writers keep saying: Trust your subconscious. Me and my subconscious, we’re hot to write some more stories.

We (or, really, me) just have to finish the damn Sage journal, and answer e-mail, and start another journal, and go to a Council meeting, and…

Journal is done. I opened up everything this morning to discover that last night, in my tiredness, I had overwritten one of the files, and had to re-create it. Unrepeatable words were said. But it’s done and gone. Invoices are ready to mail. New journal is prepped to start tomorrow.

That’s all I’ve done today, save for feeding myself, changing the cat litter, taking a 5-minute swim to rinse off, and going to the Council meeting and out to dinner afterwards. The Council meeting was productive, though. I got more people signed up to do Gate shift at War with me. (Hey, you local slackers who are reading this! Why haven’t you signed up! Don’t make me name names.) I’m running a scavenger hunt at Gyldenholt Harvest Tourney in October (after the War, of course)—I’ve been wanting to, but finally had the chance to track down the event steward. I’ve run scavenger hunts before, so this won’t be a lot of prep work.

And…guess who’s stepping up as Baronial Chronicler at Harvest?

Yeah. I know. But I’d planned to do it next June anyway, and the current Chronicler is stepping down for personal reasons (in part because a few months ago, her husband fell off a mountain and she’s been caring for him. He is, thankfully, finally walking again. Barely.). And the thing is, I can almost do this in my sleep. It doesn’t take but a few hours every month—and I’ve already got a deputy who wants to learn the ropes and help out, so I can give her work to do.

And that was my day. I’ve talked to Ken, caught up on crucial e-mail, and now it’s definitely time for bed. Tomorrow, some copy editing, some other work, and then a Styx concert! Woo hoo! In all the busy-ness, I’d almost forgotten about it! The day is well bookended—started with happy writing news, ends with the promise of Stygian goodness.