I got lucky and all three meetings that I had today were canceled. I don’t have any deadlines for the next few weeks and I did not feel like writing java code today.

I took my story Carnival of Blood and rewrote the beginning so it would “grab” a little better and shipped it off. This particular editor takes six months to accept stories, but he has bought several of my stories in the past so I figure I have a chance.The story is based on the vampire in Durrell’s book Mountolive.

I then finished a story called The Fat Lady Funeral. I started this a few months ago, but stopped writing it because I realized that I was writing a horror story. It is also a humorous zombie circus story which makes it worse. I dislike horror and I’m not good at it, but I had a thousand words written. I finished it off quick, keeping it under 1500 words so I could enter it in the AussieCon4 short story contest. I had to change the setting from North Carolina to New South Whales and use the phrase “make ready”, which is Australian slang for something. Since I am already a supporting member of Worldcon, I can enter for free so I figured I’d take a stab at the $200 prize and recoup some of my money. It is hard to write a good short story in under 1500 words, though.

I don’t expect to hear from either venue before September.

I am digging through my unfinished stories to find that I might be able to complete today before I go home. I’d like to submit at least one story that I could get a response back in the next few weeks. So far everything needs too much work and I have to start the normal work-a-day grind tomorrow or I’ll get behind.