So, that story I wrote a week ago Sunday? I mailed it out Saturday.

Let me say that another way:

I wrote a story and had it submitted somewhere within a WEEK!

I would have had it out two days after I'd written it, but Tim (who is my copy editor in these things) persuaded me to "let it sit" a few days to make sure it was how I wanted it first.

It didn't change much, actually.

I'm so excited about this. Not that I expect to keep writing drafts that clean, but I can't remember the last time that something I'd written was ready to go so fast (with the exception of reviews and newsletter matter at work, which I pretty much never sit on but spell check and read through and slap it up on the site super-fast -- it is a very different thing from writing fiction). The story was a gift, one of those times when something stressing me in my life was turned around by changing it up and writing about it. Gaia, the one I wrote a few weeks before Sick Days (which is the title of the one I just sent out, btw) was not a gift story, and it still needs a lot of work (most of that work I know what it is, but there may be stuff I've missed). Sick Days came in nearly full-formed, with the style and voices chattering away in my head until I sat my butt down to put them to paper.

I love it when this happens.

::happy dance::

So, currently I have out stories at the following markets:

F&SF
Realms (2, one in slush and one with Shawna)
Polyphony 4

McSweeney's (I think)
Nerve (over a year w/ no response to queries; I'm just leaving it on my sub log because it pads my numbers :-)
One other place I can't remember right now (sub log not on this 'puter)

So, you'd think I'd be cranking after this quick story turn-around time high, but no. No, no, we realized this past weekend that SimCity3000 that Susan gave us a while back would play on my "new" PC (which is Tim's old PC -- I have two computers, a PC desktop and an old clamshell iBook on my desk; I feel deliciously geeky about this). This is so not good. I don't mind the run-around-and-kill-shit games that Tim loves, but I get *completely* absorbed in building games such as SimCity. I must have logged twelve hours on this damn game since Saturday, and I am sitting here thinking about.the latest city I designed. It is a sickness. I am worried. My right hand is going a bit numb and things are not getting done* that need to be done.

Sigh.

It is really fun, though.

* I did spend hours cleaning the bathroom on Sunday -- got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the entire floor with a scrub brush (something I'd been meaning to do since we moved in, especially since I'm pretty sure the person who moved out did little more than sweep the floor when she moved out, and the apartment came to us rather dirty). With the cats, plus the leftover dirt that has hidden from my lesser cleanings since we moved in, this meant I made lots and lots of grey water. Then I mopped -- six times.

The bathroom is nice and pretty now. Isn't that fascinating?

Ok, I'm gonna go now. Might write more in another journal entry later. Ciao!