A first attempt...

This morning I sent out my first completed manuscript.

It's a story called 'Chickens in Paradise', and it was written for a sword and sorcery humor anthology. With any luck (okay, with a _lot_ of luck) the people who get to slog through the slush pile will think it's lovely and wonderful, and give me money and publish it.

It's due August 1. I pushed things way too late with getting it finished; I wound up paying extra at the post office to make sure it's in the PO Box in time. Which may be silly, but at least I know it won't get rejected due to something I could easily avoid.

The reading period is August 10-30; responses will be mailed out by September 5. So by the 10th or so, I should know either way.

If they don't accept it, I have a few other places in mind to send it. And I plan to do so immediately, should they not accept it. That's how it works: send the story out. If it comes back, send it back out. Lather, rinse, repeat. Revise every once in a while. Don't Give Up.

With, of course, adding other new things to the mix every once in a while. It doesn't pay to stop writing, any more than it pays to stop sending things out.

So now, I wait.

And write.

And in the meantime...

After this morning's adventure, I set about cleaning my room, doing some rearranging (as plotted here).

The fabric is _nearly_ all in the boxes in my room. Once fosveny and I have a chance to go through it all, some of that will be going away. More of it will be turned into garb over the fall and winter.

All of the photomaster boxes (so far) have been moved into the bedroom. There's some more work to be done there, but that can wait right now.

The shelves which used to sit at my back in my room are now over the radiator. This leaves only two shelves' worth of space, but I made enough space elsewhere that that's not a problem. I may add a shelf in the middle, as well.

The big mother futon is now downstairs. No, it can't stay there, but for now it's going in the van for Pennsic, and after that we're going to look into getting the roof replaced on the garage. If we go about that right, we can store the futon (and a lot of other stuff we only use once or twice a year) in there. The bookshelf I moved out of that space is now back.

The desk that was in the bedroom is now where the shelves were, but I think I'm going to wind up exchanging that for the table in the dining room - the desk in here won't hold a computer and a copier; it's far too small.

So that's going to wait until I have Lewis to help. Which will likely be over the weekend, since Sewing Night is tonight. Bleh.

On the other hand, it gets me to stop for a while...

In the meantime, I'm pleased with how much I've gotten done. The bookshelves are no longer blocking the light from the window at the side of the house; the tall plastic drawers that hold a lot of my sewing stuff are no longer blocking the light from the front window. This also means that they won't block the light from the lamp, so I can sit on the bed at _night_ and read. In my room; my space.

I needed this bad. Being in the bedroom was nice and cool when the place was Too Hot To Live. But it was too cramped, too dark, and I was spending all of my time in there, night and day. It was driving me nuts, and my writing was showing that.

It'll get hot again, in a week or two. But I'll live. I can duck back into the bedroom with the laptop if I need to. Eventually (read hopefully after Pennsic) we're going to run a new power circuit or two up into my room, and then (if I can get the old AC fixed) I'll have my own. Until then, I'll live with the heat to be in My Space.