It's been a mixed few days. Here's some good news/bad news:

Good news: I don't have jury duty! I fulfilled my civic duty, and didn't have to do anything except make two phone calls and listen to recordings that said I wasn't needed! That's the best kind of civic-duty-fulfilling there is.

Bad news: After a week of blowing my nose 10,000 times a day every day, my nose finally broke down, and I just got a wicked nosebleed. Actually, blood spurted out, completely without provocation (I hadn't even blown it recently). Got blood all over my Cemetery Dance t-shirt (which is kind of appropriate, I guess, but still sucks). It's not bleeding anymore, but it was an annoying experience.

Good news: I sold a story! "Haruspex" went to new online magazine Shadows of Saturn. I haven't actually heard from the editor, but my co-worker Amelia does some work for the magazine, so she passed on news of the acceptance. It's a little extra money (which will be thrown summarily down the wedding-hole), but more importantly, it's publication for a story that's very important to me. "Haruspex" is the first story I wrote about Marla Mason, protagonist of my story "Pale Dog" (which some of you may have read in my collection) and of my queued-up-to-be-revised novel Blood Engines. I've sent this story all over, and it never found a home, because it's too horrific for most fantasy magazines and too long for most horror magazines. I'll let y'all know when it's available. I think it's a good dark fun gruesome piece, with meddling alien angels, prophetic entrails, and lots of weird-ass magic. It's set some years before "Pale Dog" and Blood Engines, and Marla was a bit more high-strung and rage-prone in those days...

Bad news: I'm starting to get better, I think (I don't feel half so bad today as I did the day before, and the same was true yesterday), but Heather's feeling sick again, so we seem to be caught in some sort of horrible co-contagious feedback loop. Or else she caught another cold from somebody else. Crappy stuff.

So, overall, let's call the last few days a draw...