Book Being Currently Read: ABOUT TOWN by Ben Yagoda
Last Bit of Music Listened To: John Hiatt: The A&M Years '87-'94

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So today seems like a whole lot of deja vu. It's dark in the morning when I head to work, and we're getting six to eight inches of snow. My calendar says it's April 7. Why does it feel like February?

This too shall pass.

In the meantime, work continues.

I've caught up on the 400+ messages that piled up over the weekend and learned, sadly, that Australian fan John Foyster has passed away after a long and difficult battle. Harry Warner died not too long ago as well, so it's not been looking good for the older fen lately. Their presence will be greatly missed.

Looks like I have a new nonfiction article in the works now. An editor has expressed interest and the subject has consented to the interview. More details will follow a few months down the line as it won't be appearing anywhere until the autumn.

I was pointed toward a very amusing article on writing by Steve Martin. Check it out at http://www.wga.org/WrittenBy/0699/stevemartin2.html. In reading it through--some of his ideas actually aren't half-bad.

Speaking of writing, I found this in a Random-Access-Humor ezine from 1993:

The Write Stuff
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It has come to my attention that there may be new writers out there who do not submit their material to RAH because "it isn't good enough." If you fall into that category, read on. The following tale was related by Patricia C. Wrede, an established fantasy author.

There is a story about a wannabe writer who ran into John Campbell, then editor of _Analog Magazine_, at a convention. The writer mentioned that he wrote SF short fiction. Campbell asked if he had ever sent any to _Analog_. The writer said no, because they weren't good enough. Whereupon Campbell drew himself up and said in a terrible voice, "How dare you reject stories for MY MAGAZINE?"

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The point of the story being, of course, not to second guess your markets. Unless the story is being written for a specific market such as a themed anthology or a special issue of a magazine, I generally always send my work out to the top-tier and better paying markets first. Sure, I get loads of rejection slips... but this way it's only between a chance of rejection--and taking no chance whatsoever.

I finally finished the first draft of the layout for Edward and Jean Porter Dmytryk's HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN AGE from BearManor Media. There were nearly fifty pictures to adjust and find spaces for--and the book itself is so well-written that I would stop working every now and then just to read it.

The files are huge. E-mailing them to the publisher is proving to be a major pain. Ah well. I will eventually be going cable and that should help my freelance work as far as up/downloading large work files.

After I get these Dmytryk files sent, I'll be free of freelance for a few days. I also have a book by Daws Butler on deck--but plenty of time still on that project.

Haven't had much time lately for my own writing. I'm going to do some tonight, but I know it won't be much. It always takes me a few days to get used to this whole daylight savings nonsense. In any case, I'll see what all I have on deck for projects. I have it in my head to write and submit at least one short story per month. That seems a reasonable length of time for the writing, then revising of each story. I know some who try to do one every two weeks... and one fellow who (gasp!) tries to do one once a week. Actually, now that I think of it--I haven't seen anything from him lately. Maybe he burned out.

Yes, one per month sounds reasonable. After all, I'm also still working on the first draft of a novel as well. (And that is giving me some plot problems right now--oy)

Cheers!

--John Teehan