What Ho! Is that the smell of pounded keys?

Yes, if I may direct your attention to the bottom right corner of the page (those of you on the RSS feed…just imagine a team of dancing llamas and you get the idea), I am adding to the works in progress counters. Not just words written for the Dreaming Pools, but I’ve also started adding other (new) short stories.

Blame clareksworld; I do. Yesterday I got notice that this Hugo nominated magazine (well, at least Neil, who I’ve exchanged a few tweets with in the past) is following me on twitter. Have I bothered to tweet back to say thanks, and why the follow? Of course not! That would be, like, admitting I don’t know.

So what’s the adult, appropriate reaction to this? (which, really, isn’t earth shattering in the least, but after almost a week of listening to the girls snipe at each other, anything counts for excitement) Why, to begin typing out stories of course! Plus, I really  needed a break from the novel – I’m still contributing to it, I expect to make 70k this week, but I no longer think I will be able to see 80k before August. Just not in the cards.

But a fun little short story? Sure, I can do that! Get a few off the mental slush pile, get the engine warmed up, then see how many consecutive weeks (one rejection allowed every seven days) it takes to hitting a stride before someone agrees that I’ve hit my mark (whether that’s Clarke’s World or another magazine is of no consequence at that point).

So, today I’m working on Gingerbread Man, a sci-fi piece I’d toyed with before but started over from scratch last night. After that I’m thinking a short set in the Dreaming Pools universe, though its hard to say.

I’d say more – like after 5 rejections I’ll just post the story on here for you to laugh at – but I really need to get back to writing. Later!