I found the little 20 gig disk drive that I had used to make backups last year. My machine at work is not private and anyone can and does wander through my files to see what I am working on. I can connect the little disk drive via USB, work a little during lunch on a story, and then disconnect it without any danger of someone complaining.

I found a bunch of finished stories that I thought might be lost on the backup disk, and I copied them all up to Google Docs. I have decided to use Google Docs to keep track of my stories in a centralized place, rather on a disk that can be lost, stolen or broken.

I updated my stats and reworked my submissions spreadsheet. In total I have 68 finished stories on Google Docs. 52 are published, although this includes a dozen flash pieces that I put out at various sites. These flash stories (less than 1000 words) don’t actually get accepted on these sites, they just don’t get rejected.

That leaves about 16 stories that I have not been able to get published. Mostly these stories are just not very good, but several are not spec-fic and I don’t know what to do with them. Some are just not a good fit for any of the venues. For instance, I’ve written a couple of Lovecraft style stories.

I also found about 35 stories, longer than 1,000 words, that are not finished. They either had a bad start or I decided that it might not be worth finishing them, or I just never got back to them. I put these on Google, as well, in a WIP folder with the hopes of finishing a few.

I did a little looking through Ralan and Duotrope and discovered a Lovecraft venue so I gave one weird tale a polish and sent it out. I submitted three stories to various Science Fiction venues. These are from the stories that I didn’t think were that good, so the odds are against me. (Actually, I worked on these stories and I think they might be pretty good.) If I have time I will send out a few more.

Currently I have five stories out waiting for the inevitable rejection. This is more than I’ve had out in a couple of years. Perhaps I will have some good news on one of them in a few weeks.