Trophy

I received a suitably ghastly and chilling wall plaque from Apex Digest last night to commemorate my 1^st place finish in their Halloween contest. I’ll take a photograph of it this weekend. It’s very cool.

I’m getting close to submitting “Beyond All Doubt.” The story is still hovering around 6300 words but it has waxed and waned a bit over the past several days of editing. I received some good feedback from my first reader, which led me to tighten up the intro and reconsider the finale. At 6300 words, it seems a tad on the long side, but I can’t find anything else to cut and it’s about the same length as my last submission to an MWA anthology, which was accepted.

Looks like I’ll be writing another article for Rue Morgue this summer. I won’t say anything more about it than that, but it will be fun. Stay tuned.

Jericho had a nice cliff-hanger last night. I thought they might get a little bit farther along than they did, but the finale has me eager to see the confrontation come to a head in the fall. The Unit’s finale was a little more discombobulated, with team members scattered to the wind and pitted against each other for their personal survival. Didn’t see that one coming.

LOST is really hitting its stride. Though I’ve been a loyal and avid follower all along, the past several episodes have kicked it up a notch, and finally getting to learn about Ben’s past was gravy. Does anyone know the schedule for the finale? I’ll be in Japan and I believe it’s two hours but I don’t know what time it starts. Can’t miss setting the recorder for that one.

I’m about 100 pages into Blaze, and the tension level is starting to pick up. The title character is a wounded individual—he started out life fairly normal but an injury at an early age turned him into a Tom Cullen-esque youth and man. Unlike Tom, Blaze falls under a few bad influences and it turns out he’s reasonably good at the con game, so long as he has a partner. His temper and his strength are advantages when he’s young and in group homes, but don’t work in his favor so much in the modern timeline of the story. He stands out, with his statuesque height and the dent in his forehead. Wish I had more reading time so I could chew through this book. Maybe this weekend, though I have to work on a collaborative piece, finalize my Storytellers Unplugged essay, write a few book reviews and start cogitating over my Rue Morgue piece.