turnip!

I have resubbed the sf story to Abyss and Apex. I think it's a little embarrassing, really, how much better the rewrite is, but we shall see what the Editoral PTB think. My victory is in getting the damn thing sent at all. If I send out the novella this afternoon (which I could do, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility), then all of my currently submittable stories (i.e., finished, polished up, with all their buttons buttoned and flies zipped) save one will be out. And that one is just going to sit there and snicker at me. I can feel it.

ETA: No, no matter how much I pretend it doesn't, the new novella really needs to be read through one more time. Because that's the process, and that's how it needs to work. So it won't be going out today. But maybe tomorrow.

epigraph for Mole, Delving

I seem to be in an epigraphic mood this week. Thus:

Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them. They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment. The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy.

--M. R. James
"A Neighbour's Landmark"

It's 4:00, and what have I accomplished?

things done
1. Read through the new novella and fixed things that needed fixing (and there were several). It can go out tomorrow, if I can get myself together to print it out and get the envelopes addressed and the cover letter written and everything.

2. Finished an article on Hamlet I'd gotten halfway through sometime last week.

3. Finished the chapter of Bowers I was stuck in. (melymbrosia, he's terrible. He's smug, chauvinistic, and also boring.)

4. Wrote one new sentence on the salvage thing, which wants to be something somewhere between a novella and a novel, but be damned if I know what.

things not done
1. I did not get to the library this afternoon, because I was moving too damn slowly to get my ass out the door at a reasonable time.

2. I have not finished Bowers.

3. I haven't gotten Rabinowitz written into the dissertation where he needs to go.

4. DL(2) Ch. 5 is still stuck like Pooh in Rabbit's doorway.

5. Errandy things that need to happen.

***

One of my favorite of Walt Kelly's secondary characters in Pogo was Sarcophagus MacAbre, a vulture who spoke in black-bordered engravings. Doom and gloom, dearly beloved, is one of Sarcophagus's better lines, and a quite adequate reflection of my mood at the moment.

nothing like a little good news to yank a bad mood out of its tailspin

Have just made my third sale to Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet.

Am as pleased as Punch.

bookkeeping

salvage novel(la): 602 words

I'm about to be able to link in another chunk of stuff that was originally part of a different story--or, rather, it was originally in a different story, in which it was out of place, because the rest of the story didn't know what to do with it. I think this story does, and that's pleasing.