Read about why "Short stories often suffer from herring shortages", and other advice on short fiction, from Nick Mamatas. Said advice is inspired by his recent gig as editor of Clarkesworld Magazine (which pays 10 cents a word for stories up to 4,000 words).

Heather and I are reaping the benefits of Kitten Therapy. We were both impatient all day yesterday to get home and play with Freybug. She's a tiny dynamo! So frolicsome! [Edit: Not that kind of frolicsome; the kind where she leaps about and attacks everything that moves, and a few things that don't.] She's reasonably good when we sleep, too. She only woke me up three or four times by attacking my toes. I'm more worried about rolling over and squishing her, honestly, since she likes to snuggle, and is small enough to fit in the pocket of my cargo pants. She continues to terrify the other cats when we let them see each other, despite being about a tenth their weight.

I got a little royalty check for Little Gods yesterday. Mmm, free beer money. With luck the checks will be bigger in the future, now that the new offset version is available for sale.

I've been beating my head against Ferocious Dreamers without much success for ten days now. I finally squirted out 750 words last night, but they aren't very good. This morning I did have a little realization about some character motivations, though, which helps. I think trying to salvage usable sections from the previous draft is a mistake. It's messing with my head, and I'm having a hard time feeling the book as a whole. I think I'm better off with a page-one rewrite, so that's what I'm going to do. It's a great relief, actually.