Last weekend some people went to Norwescon, some to Minicon, some
to Eastercon. We went to Sacramento for my uncle Ben's memorial
gathering. Ben had a big family -- six kids, most with spouses and
kids of their own -- and many friends, so that there were nearly a
hundred people in attendance. It was an occasion with more laughter
than tears, and I got in some good conversations with my parents
and cousins (special shout-out to my cousin Adam Levine of
GamerAndy.com). Not to mention
some very good food. Our hotel had a noisy disco, but on the second
night they moved us to a different room with a view of the lake,
which offered a pair of geese with fuzzy little goslings and, as a
special bonus, flittering bats. (Bats = good.)
Since then I've mostly been revising. I got a reply back from
Gordon Van Gelder about my rewrite of "Titanium Mike," and he liked
the new fifth scene I'd written in which I put Mike on stage. So
I revised the story one last time, to integrate the new scene and
punch up the ending, and sent it in. I think this is the final
version.
I also finished revising the Jupiter story -- now titled "The True
Story of Merganther's Run" because "Merganther's Drive" suggested
a stardrive to some readers -- and put it in the mail to Analog.
(Okay, technically it's still sitting on the sofa. But it's in the
envelope and will go in the mail first thing tomorrow morning.) It
took me almost two full weeks to revise it, because I spent only
half an hour or so per evening on it. I think I needed a break
after completing my novella.
Speaking of the novella, I got it critiqued yesterday. The crit
stung quite a bit, because I was pretty emotionally involved with
the story and the comments, harsh though some of them were, were
generally on target. But one critter pointed out that it wouldn't
have gotten such intense crits if it hadn't touched a nerve in the
readers. This story has considerable potential if I can just smooth
out the rough bits. Also, it does seem to be the right length for
the material, and I've identified four pro and five semi-pro markets
that will take stories of this length. I'm going to take a little
time away from it before attempting to revise it.
Also this weekend I had coffee with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jaylake, visited
the Portland Farmers' Market (where we acquired lovely tomatoes and
basil for a
tomato-bread
salad, plus a small container of ladybugs for the garden), and
attended a bit of Wordstock,
Portland's annual "festival of the book." We only went to one reading
and barely bought anything at the book fair, but it was still nice
to be in a space with thousands of people all of whom cared about
words.
What next? First, I'm going to revise at least one of my older
stories and either get it critiqued or put it right in the mail.
Then I'm going to start in on a new story. It will be a fantasy,
it will be set in the present or the past, and it will be short.
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