It's warm in here at Fireside Coffee Lodge this evening. The temperature outside should only be in the mid-seventies but the southern wall of windows looking out onto a busy, rush hour laden Powell Boulevard is reflecting back the heat from the pavement or something. Almost everyone is complaining about how warm it is in here; everyone but Jay who isn't feeling temperatures yet like the rest of us.

700 words tonight on a new short story that I'm going to call J & L for the time being. This WIP is going in two separate directions at the moment and I've half a mind to try to create two separate versions of it - one dark and downtrodden, one with a humor bent like YAWT turned out to have. The dark one is a good release for some angst I've felt pent up with for a while. The humor version is the one I really want to write. I had so much fun writing YAWT, a piece full of voice and character peculiarities. I want all my short stories to be that fun but I know I'd get tired of it eventually, and probably, my readers would too.

I haven't sent YAWT out yet. I'm saving it for a late year submission. What better reason than to create another one along the same lines for earlier submission elsewhere, right? But I did resubmit my previously created short, the one that was almost bought. So close. Not a humor piece at all but well liked. If I'm lucky, very, very lucky, the dark version of J & L will turn out as good as this one and then, I will have fulfilled my personal goal of six new shorts for the year. And with half a year left to go. Sweet!

Call me Speedy. Call me Informed. Call me a persistent, persevering, Go-Getter. Just don't call me late for dinner.

I believe strongly in a couple of my completed short stories. When one of them came back this afternoon, I squealed with glee at receiving the personal, upbeat 'rejection,' checked my weekly submission market homework, and sent the story right back out. I didn't even give this baby time to dump off a load of laundry or raid the 'fridge. Just a quick verification, a loving pat on the head, and out it went like a dutiful son, fresh college degree in hand and a head full of sense and direction.

Happy trails, young one. Make your mama proud.

The husband and I struggled half the evening on the quest to find a title for YAWT (Yet Another Working Title), looking for something that hasn't already been used for something way much bigger and better than I'm likely to ever write (Arthur C. Clarke-level, Issac Asinov, etc). YAWT is done, as done as it's going to get before sending it out for an extra special invitational critique...which can't happen if it doesn't have a name.

Argh! I hate naming things. People, pets, inanimate objects; fine. Stories? Like pulling teeth, with grass clippings and a spork.

But success at last! We found one I like, one that doesn't appear to be currently in use anywhere within the reaches of a Google search, and it's good to go.

Typing in title. Checking spelling just to make sure. Save as. It's done.

But then, the questions start cropping up. YAWT is vastly different from anything else I have ever written. It's got humor. I usually write dark stuff. I don't know if I want to potentially blow my special critique shot with something completely different. But I do think it's the best short I've ever written. Should what I think matter for this particular circumstance? Or ever?

I could drive myself bonkers worrying about this, and when have I ever been afraid of what anyone else thinks about my writing?

Never.

Okay. Fine. I'll send it.

Any minute now.

Any minute...

Rechecking ms formatting.

Okay.

Rechecking alignment.

Okay.

Opening email program, new message, entering address, cc myself, add subject line, short introduction and blurb.

Rechecking ms word count.

Checking personal info.

Adding a second email address to cc.

Running out of excuses.

Add attachment.

Okay...3...2..

Rechecking spelling in email.

Finger poised over Send.

3...2...*gulp*...

*click*

For as much as I complained a couple of days ago about stuffing my half-finished short story (YAWT - Yet Another Working Title) into the Dead Story file, I can't keep myself from thinking about how I might be able to fix it. I love it when my brain works like this because just as often, it doesn't.

In other news, my entry in the Writers of the Future contest - 2nd quarter, came back. While I didn't place anything with them, rejection doesn't really bother me (I learned to deal with it a lot growing up) and so, I rewarded myself by sending the story right back out to another market, to a publication that had good things to say to me last year in a personalized rejection on what I consider now a lesser story. Get back in that saddle, get back on that horse. A-yup, I live for this kind of thing. And while I was at it, I sent WotF an entry for their 3rd quarter contest. That makes six of my stories out there looking for homes, or hopefully at the very least, a word or two of guidance.

Next month, The Car Novel bubbles to the surface again. With the first half edited and the second half's outline nearly complete, I've got no reason to come up short on finishing it this year. Time to dig out my aloha shirts and my favorite Vans, dust off my car, squirt some Uber-Gloss on it, and get the oil changed (finally), and dive back into Cecil, Floyd, and Scratchy's world.

Now if only the weather outside would cooperate. Still having cold, wet, windy late February/early March-like days. Still experiencing near-freezing overnight temperatures. STILL have those geraniums camping out in the garage (under grow lights thank goodness).

Lots of things to work on today: My Broad Universe reading for Norwescon, getting a story wrapped up to send out for INK critique, a final polish on another to send to market, a handle to find on Working Title. In another month or so, The Car Novel will be screaming to be looked at and pecked at again.

It never really ends. I need to internalize that statement now that I feel somewhat real with this writing gig. Isn't this what I wanted? Isn't this what I said I wanted? Of course it is, but how scary this world can be if I let it.

(I'm not letting it.)

ETA: Got my Broad Universe piece edited for what I swear is the last time. The INK piece has been polished but will need to be waved in front of Steve's eyes before sending it out along with the story going out to market. I'm finally proud of the INK piece because I think I may have sufficiently added a key element that helps tie it all together finally. Working Title still isn't budging. Gosh, that story is stubborn! It's like trying to pull a planet out of my . . . nevermind.

I guess after a weekend wherein everything went right, the following weekend was bound to go all wrong. It may or may not have started when I was too smart for my own good. You see, I can surf the 'net with the best of them. Six years playing technical online support for a company located 1600 miles away can teach someone that if'n they's got half a mind, and I always figured I had a wee bit more than that.

So a couple of weeks ago, which was just a couple of weeks after we invested in our writing future and bought a dedicated home server set up for backing up our files, I saw an article online about how said server actually corrupts all the files and that Microsoft has continued to ignore the problem. I didn't tell Steve about it for a few days; he was swamped with work-ery things as it was, and I figured as soon as I did tell him, he tell me what he usually does. "Nothing to worry about. This doesn't affect us."

Not so in this case and it's possible we're a couple of thousand dollars in the hole now because Microsoft can't get their collective selves together long enough to fix the problem.

Now, before you sing praises of the Mac world, let it be known we're working on it albeit slowly. Steve's job requires his use of Windows so unless we want to take up living somewhere without his job and without computers, not to mention electricity to run them, we're stuck with Microsoft for a while longer.

Anyway, I told him about what I read and that caused him to be unable to sleep well as such computer-related things tend to do. What followed was the day-into-night development of a quasi workaround to the problem amid bucket fulls of worry.

After that, a very recent network upgrade started giving him fits and before I knew it, the main computer area here was strewn with cables, CDs, and parts that went somewhere unknown and all the computers were occupied with error messages or the like and the day that I thought I'd get some decent writing time in turned into a day filled with frustration and just trying to stay out of the way of the head nerd.

It didn't get any better the later the day got and included my stamps.com software no longer recognizing itself. But for the wasted day and hair-pulling, Steve figured out a workaround for that too and I'm able to have two manuscripts stamped and ready to send out in the morning.

So, in the writing column, submissions are looking good this week. In the equipment department, things are functional and put back together for the most part. As for Microsoft's problem, that's still a problem and we're not happy in the least.