The Telling bounced from Tales of Talisman – only 4 days. They wrote:

This was actually quite a strong contender. I felt the science and the concept were interesting.

I have a feeling that when I changed the sex of the protagonist, the sexual dynamics between the characters turned off the editor. I should change the character back to a man so as not to confuse the reader. I thought confusion would go over big at SH, Ideomancer, and A&A, but none of them bought into it.
I still think that this is strong story. It’s back to www.ralan.com – I’m not ready to send it Space Squid just yet. It may be strong enough to get a “nice writing, but” from JJA, but I don’t like going to the post office and waiting in line.
On the plus side, I wrote a 4k cyberpunk-ish story yesterday. I have to go back and make the tech understandable to average readers. I hate dumbing down my stories so that goofy editors can understand them. There should be a zine exclusively for readers who have finished at least some college, passed calculus, and can program in at least one language. What is that Heinlein quote about math?

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.

I mostly agree, although my non-math friends do have endearing qualities.

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As long as I am blogging I can complain about my bad foot. I am in much pain. In addition, favoring my foot has thrown my knee out again and I have trouble walking. I was in the mall across from where I work at lunch time trying to Christmas shop. A fight broke out between some older teenagers and I could not hobble out of the way fast enough. A large kid stepped hard on my bad foot. He was wrestling with another kid at the time and we all went down. I have a large bruise on one side of my foot and the original damage is on the other side. I have to climb 8 flights of stairs in the parking garage to get to the truck when I knock off tonight and I hope that I can make it without calling a taxi.