Holy crap, this has been a week.

Started the new job, am liking it quite a bit. I'm at IBM's iMedia Solutions department, which is sort of an internal ad agency and production company, editing and writing online content for the massive company website. It's a very laid-back environment, lots of cool folks, and challenging, interesting work.

I feel very good about this position -- just goes to show that if you just let things happen once you've done your part (that is, sending out applications, making contacts, going to interviews, etc.), those things just sort of work themselves out. No sense getting all stressed. I feel very zen.

I surprised myself this week by getting a good bit of my own writing done even though my time was much tighter. I made some last-minute changes to the Wannoshay novel, thanks to my buddy Mark's excellent suggestions. It's always good to have a speed-reading lawyer pal read your work for logical problems -- I'd changed the timeframe of the climactic final scene from June to February in the midwest, and had my poor main character (and his wife and 3-month old son!) wading into what would've been a frigid river; I fixed it so they walked across the frozen river instead. Much, much better.

I also finished (along with my collaborator Tim) the first draft of our horror story, and started making notes on fixing up the Shadow Wolf story I wrote with Derek. Both stories are going to be quite rocking when we finish the revisions. I give all credit to my fellow writers.

I'm trying to figure out, now that I'm sorta caught up on most of my writing projects, what to work on next. I know I need to get jamming on the Blackbeard novel, but I feel too scattered to sit down to a novel just yet. I think the crazy week of revising the SF novel sort of burned too many brain cells, you know?

Hell, I may just read some more baseball stories and finish the Kinsella novel this weekend, and not write at all. Or maybe just a tiny bit on the All-Nations baseball story...

I also got news this week that my story "Gunning for the Buddha" is going to be in the debut issue of Singularity. Yeehaw! I'll be sharing a ToC with Kage Baker. Lovely.

Speaking of writing, oh man, do I have a cool link for you! Thanks to my buddy Toby, I learned about Jim Kelly's latest "On the Net" article, focusing on what my former Clarion teacher calls The Next Wave. Look who got his own paragraph! Man! Craziness. What tickles me the most, even more than being put into such an esteemed group of writers like this, is the fact that I've met almost half of the writers on the list, like Ben Rosenbaum, Ruth Nestvold, and some others, and even better, I'm buddies with most of those I've met, like Toby, Greg, and others.

It's nice to be a Younk Turk. :) Later!

Now Reading:
Iowa Baseball Confederacy, WP Kinsella

Stories out to Publishers:
18 now!

Today's Words:
zip, zero, nada

Words for '03:
24,000

Today's Quote:
"What is written without effort is read without pleasure." -- Samuel Johnson (my new email tagline for work emails!)