back to it

Simply put, we had one of the best weekends up at the lake ever. Nothing special, just time with different friends we hadn't seen for awhile. The kids ate ice cream cones every day. We got majorly hungover from margaritas. We took a boat ride on a lake we hadn't been on before. Long dog walks. Bonfires. Late nights and sleeping in. A parade.

Now, to business. For some stupid reason, I'm entering two contests. I've never been much good at contests. I'm disappointed when I lose (and I always do) and the entries are a fuck lot of work to prepare.

I had another rejection on "To Stop A War." I just read about controversy on an agent blog, how usually when someone thinks their work is controversial, it's not, really. I think "War" is pretty controversial on a lot of levels. I won't go into why--I think it's still available to read over on Baen's Bar which can be reached through that link on the sidebar. And I've gotten two personal rejections explaining why they aren't taking the story, both of which had to do with its contoversial nature and violent imagery (yeah, it's a war story. people die. so sue me). So WTF? Not just based on this, but from reading lately as well, I'm afraid the speculative zine business has gone all milquetoast on us. Certainly, the things I've read aren't tackling tough issues, which is too bad because the nature of speculative fiction lends itself so neatly. I just find it interesting that the zine business seems to be dying a slow death (at least in print) and I'm wondering why no one is examing this. Any opinions?

Or perhaps they have, at length, and I'm just behind the times. I guess Rob Sawyer discussed it the other day at that seminar. He, incidently, is a great presenter and seems like a nice guy. If you ever get a chance to see him, he's worth it.

Oh well. Anyway, preparations are going to tie things up for awhile, not to mention end of school, publishing time, and a myriad of other duties.