Caveat Lector

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I hate waiting. I’ve got a dozen submissions sitting out there waiting for responses, ranging from a week to nearly a year. I don’t mind the ones that are a month or so, but after about two months I start wondering if they ever got it in the first place, especially the ones that don’t have any kind of response.

 Of course, it’s not all bad. “A Time to Die,” to date my only non-speculative story, earned a hold request from How’d They Do That? A hold isn’t an acceptance, and it could easily still be rejected, but I’ve got a roughly 50-50 chance (based on the number of “holds” they expect versus the number of slots available). One of my other holds is also one of my longest waits — seven months for “Like Father Like Daughter” in Courting Morpheus. I don’t have a clue about this one. Part of the story is similar to “First Night in Jennings Grove,” which the editor has seen and enjoyed, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot if there’s better submissions. The anthology will be split between open submissions (such as mine) and invited authors.

Jennings Grove  continues to eat up a lot of my time and I haven’t had a chance to write anything new lately. Unfortunately, work is eating up even more time and I haven’t had a chance to write as much as I should on Jennings Grove. I’ve got about 20,000 words done, enough to get me through the first part of October. I should have a great deal more written by then, but then again, I should have a great deal more written now.