Well, the last one was almost six months between regular, full-time gigs (with occasional short-term stints at places known acronymically as GSK and TRG, not to mention the early-morning run as a paper carrier), but this one turned out to be just three months in length. Yep, my second "sabbatical" ends on Wednesday. I am gainfully employed again!

While I hate to leave behind my big-ass chunks of free time, it's probably good (for our finances) that I get my ass back to work. The new gig is at IBM, as a courseware editor and writer. I think it'll be quite cool. So I have to live it up tomorrow, my last day off for a while!

Lots of stuff going on today -- got my contract from Prime Books for my short story collection, and also got my Nebula Preliminary ballot. Filled both of 'em out immediately, of course. Go Greg van Eekhout, Greg Frost, Theodora Goss, Karen Joy Fowler, China Mieville and all the other writers I dig a lot!

Speaking of stories, I'm up to 8 stories out to various publishers. I've been so busy with novel revisions that I haven't paid much attention to stories, and I'd forgotten what a time-suck it can be, getting stories ready for subbing. I had to cut 2,000 words from "Skin and Blood" before submitting it, and actually, it's much better for the cutting. But it took time... and I'm running out of free time! The sabbatical's ending, you know!

But I did manage to do some really close copy-editing on the opening to the Last of the Hand novel, and now all I have to do is tighten up the last two sections.

For some reason, I have a lot of awkward sentences with way too much going on in them, usually two or three phrases jammed together like this: "Johnathan had no more than blinked twice before the wave had moved a mile closer, then closer still, growing in height as it reached for both the sun and the land in front of it." Ouch.

But after I fix up those things, that book will be DONE! And it's good. I feel really proud of it. As I was telling Elizabeth tonight, some of the first few scenes were written almost 12 years ago, back when I was doing free-writing with my 8th graders when I was teaching junior high out in Nebraska. So yeah, this story's been with me a while. I just hope I don't need to take another sabbatical before it sees print... Later!

Now Playing:
"Some Devil," Dave Matthews

Now Reading:
Harry Potter 4, JK Rowling

Today's Quote:
She went back to her bedroom and pulled on a heavy Chicago Bears sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and her best pair of chunky black boots. After digging in the mess of her closet, she found her favorite black stocking cap and pulled it on over her wild black hair, with a quick check in her mirror to make sure she didn't look too ghetto.