Oof, it’s been an interesting week it’s been. Between all my usual writing, reading, and working things, I’ve also had a visit with my brother and his family and a major mega sinus attack. The sinus attack is still lingering, although it’s a bit improved. Bright light still hurts like the dickens, but, thankfully, Mother Nature took pity on me and it’s a pretty rainy, overcast day…for now. The sky is showing a few worrying hints of blue, but, if anything, maybe that means I can fit in a bike ride later. For now, though, it’s sitting in front of the computer and taking a look at what I accomplished last week and what I hope to accomplish this week. Let’s have a look!
Reading: Sometimes, you think you’re close to the end of a book, and you keep trying to get to that last page, but no matter how much it seems like you’ve read, the ending just never comes. That’s how it is with me and Brandon Graham’s Missing People right now, which is a very good book, but I swear it seems to be dragging like nobody’s business in the end. I’m almost there, though, the action of the third act is pretty much culminated, and the end is truly in sight!
This week, I started reading through the Fiction Desk‘s All these Little Worlds anthology, to help me get a better handle on what they like to publish. And, though it’s not an official release yet, I’ve received an ARC copy of D.J. Lutz‘s upcoming cozy mystery novel, The Apple Pie Alibi, which I intend to plow through by July 20th so I can provide a little author blurb for him. This is a statement that makes me nervous, because I know how slowly I read and how many different things I read, but I think it’s a whole different case when I’m reading for business and not simply just for pleasure.
I’m also plugging away at coding up Max D. Stanton“s heavy-metal fantasy trip WUR story, “The Hero of Madgeburg,” which is my personal favorite of last year’s bunch. I hope to have the coding finished today, ready to share it with the world tomorrow before we do an interview with Max at the end of the month. I know it’s a little late for the Featured Story, but it’s been a rough start to July.
Writing: Rejections and acceptances have been flying off the handle for me this last week, and the wildest thing has been that all the acceptances were pretty much immediate publications, which was a whirlwind, especially when you consider I have one story in the wings that got accepted in December and I’ve just now started the editing process with the publisher. It’s been nice dealing with some publishers that put stuff out right away for a change! In the past week, I’ve accepted and subsequently published three stories: “Ten” via 50 Word Stories, “Hack” via the Saturday Evening Post, and “The Elephant Curse” via Trembling with Fear.
It hasn’t all been shiny acceptances, though. I’ve gotten a whopping 5 rejections since the last post, bringing my total to 67, but with three acceptances, it really softens the blow, especially since the stories have been very well received so far. As much as I like the story I started to potentially submit to Mummy Knows Best, I don’t think I’ll finish it in time, thought the 3Elements one is looking pretty good. Today, I started up a potential entry for the next issue of The First Line, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ve also had two really vivid dreams that I’ve scribbled down and set aside for later, because they’d make really kick ass books, I think (one’s about a woman who’s haunted by a dead fiance, the other is about a really dark and twisted competition between sororities that involves a lot of dark and twisted magic).
‘Rithmatic: Yesterday, I got to spend the day with my brother and his family at Raging Waves, a vaguely Australian themed waterpark here in northwestern Illinois. It’s been a while since I’ve been to a water park, and this one was pretty basic (especially for the not-so-basic price), but we had a lot of fun, despite the fact that I was pretty much blind in one eye from my sinus attack. The real treat (other than seeing my nieces and nephew, of course!), was when we went out to the Two Brothers Roundhouse in Aurora for dinner afterwards. My brother is huge into craft beers, so we always like to hit up some of the many fantastic local breweries here in the Chicago area, and the Roundhouse is such a cool space! Not only is it just a really cool place, but they easily have the best vegan nachos I have ever had. I’ll repeat that, the BEST VEGAN NACHOS EVER. I want to go back just to eat more of those freakin’ delicious nachos (my boyfriend actually got the nachos, I got their vegan tacos and some fries, but, man, I ate a lot of his nachos, too, which was okay, because they were huuuuuge and my tacos were smoll). We also may have our first possible serious consideration for a wedding venue, too, because their courtyard is gorgeous and exactly the sort of scene we’d want, and there’s a Holiday Inn right across the parking lot for accommodations. Nice location planning!
That’s all for now. I took today off because the original plan with the brother’s family was to do camping, but that fell through, so I’ve got a nice Monday to get a lot of things done, and I’m really looking forward to it.
Happy reading, everyone!
L.S. Engler 