This was a nice weekend. I grabbed my laptop and went over to Borders Friday night, and got a lot of work done on the novel. Not writing, but organizing. I'd originally planned to alternate with odd chapters in the present day of the protagonist, and even chapters in his past. Then I realized that this really wouldn't work so well when submitting it, since most publishers ask for three chapters and an outline. So, instead of having 3000 word chapters, I integrated the two present and past sections into one 6000 word chapter. I know this doesn't sound exciting, but it's nice to be able to figure things like this out. Now I just need to write the second half of the first chapter, and the second half of the third chapter, and I'll have three complete chapters at 18,000 words. Yay!

I spent most of Saturday over in Chapel Hill/Carrboro visiting Jamie and his wife Steffi. It was a nice visit, just hanging out and talking a lot, going to Nice Price Books (a really great used book store, where I happened to find a copy of O. Henry Festival Stories 1998 containing Mike Jasper's Honorable Mention-winning story "Fences"), and going to the Weaver Street Market to get stuff to make tacos that night. That whole area over there is really nice; I may consider going to UNC-CH for my doctorate, but that's a long way down the road, and I'm not even sure I'll go for the Ph.D. if they get the M.F.A. program going at NCSU soon. But it's a nice town, and I had fun exploring it with a good friend.

Got "Solipsist's Lament" back from Mythic Delirium, bringing my story-out count down to seven. I really need to look at what I've got tonight and make a run to the post office tomorrow. I have a few new stories that are just about ready to go out.

The Cup-a-Prose meeting last night went really well. It was just Mike, Scott, and I, but we were the ones with stories this time, so it worked out all right. I got some great feedback on "King of the Traffic Lights" and "Watersnake, Firesnake", and was surprised by how much they enjoyed the latter story, even with all its current flaws. I really like it too; it's a cool little Eastern fairy tale. Hopefully, I'll hear from Janet about it soon (because I know I screwed up some of the Asian elements) so that I can send it out. I'm glad to hear that my most recent story is my best yet, since that means I'm actually getting better.

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Now Reading:
Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists edited by Peter Straub

Stories Out to Publishers:
7

Novel Word Count:
11,600