The Bester Un-blocker

Gordon Van Gelder returned "The Man Who Machine-Gunned the Lady of the Lake". I sent it via e-mail as a fantasy submission to Ideomancer. I've sent Gordon "The Dragon's Black Box".

Got a confirmation from SpecFic World that they got "Professor Malakoff' for their slush pile. Also got a confirmation from Jayme Blaschke at RevSF that he got "Good Old Gal".

John Thiel at Surprising Stories says they'll be running "After Image" in their September issue.

I may have hit a block with "Traffic Report' I used my old "Bester title" trick to get unblocked.

In case you don't know, a few months ago I copied individual words from the title of Alfred Bester's short stories onto slips of paper. When I get blocked, I shuffle the slips and deal them into three piles. I think pick a word from each pile.

Half the time i do this, the three words I pick don't jog anything - but the other half of the time, something immediately pops to mind.

The first time I tried this, out came Used and Men and Choice. I immediately had an idea, and that became "Business as Usual". In fact, the story starts with the phrase "Choice Used Men" (it's on a sign).

Last night I tried it again, and it may have worked. More later.