Ow-ow-ow! No Fair!

Last night I submitted a story for "Sword and Sorceress 22" and this morning I got a rejection. They had it for about thirteen hours. It's the quickest rejection I've ever gotten for a story. I'm not sure what I did wrong; I guess I'll have to get a copy of the anthology when it comes out to see what they did buy. Oh well, now I've got something I can send to "Realms of Fantasy" or to "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction."

In between all of the writing that I did S&S 22, I've been working on a PHP script to help me with marketing. I'd have to say that marketing my stories is one of my weak spots. OK -- between the stories I've written that I hope are salable and all the pro- semi-pro and amature-markets to choose from I am paralized with indecision. Once I'm done with the script I should have an easy way to generate a list of my stories, what markets they've been sent to, and what markets I should send them to next. Yes, there are three look-up tables, and I get to use IF and WHILE statements to build a report.

At least I got my prize money from Writer's of the Future today. So now I can buy paper and printer cartridges.

Arthur latest joke is to say "six" randomly when he counts and when he recites the alphabet. Arthur seems to understand the concept of counting, although I've noticed that three and five are the numbers he usually counts to reguardless of how many objects there actually are. I think Arthur's favorite song switches back and forth between "Truly Scrumptious" from "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang" and "Kumbayah, Mother Goddess" (hey, we live in Eugene). His favorite phrase for a while was from the "Shimmer" slush-pile: "Ow! Ow! Ow-ow-ow! No fair! No fair!"... but I think it's become "Delicious" -- or more accurately, "'Licious."

---

Scene: (Arthur and Mark are rough housing)

Arthur (jumping up and down on Mark's stomache): "Bounce bounce bounce!"

Mark (in time with the jumping): "Oof oof oof! Hey, don't bounce on daddy; he's old."

Arthur (channelling his inner teen): "Tragic."

John: "And who taught him that word?" (Thinking, 'The same man who objects to the phrase 'evil drink.')

Mark: "Ooh, and he got the intonation right, too."