Leaving on a jet plane

Bought my tickets this evening to attend the Nebula Weekend in D.C. I will arrive Friday morning at Reagan Airport - which is less than two miles from the hotel - on a United flight from Little Rock. I will return Monday afternoon on an American Airlines flight. I am taking two days off from work, Friday and Saturday. Monday is normally a day off for me because I work Saturdays.

Daily Science Fiction's May 2012 line-up

	April 25, 201
Daily Science Fiction's Editor Jonathan Laden writes on their web site: "The following stories are scheduled for email distribution in May of 2012. Each story will be posted at www.dailysciencefiction.com one week after its exclusive email distribution. The stories from May 2012 will appear in a Kindle edition available on Amazon." May's table of contents is: 1 May: "Seven Losses of Na Re" by Rose Lemberg 2 May: "Clem" by Cassandra Rose Clarke 3 May: "An Old Acquaintance" by K.G. Jewell 4 May: "Dancing in the Dark" by Stephanie Burgis 7 May: "One Childhood of Many" by Andrew S. Fuller 8 May: "The Rush of the Wind and the Roar of the Engines, and the Call of the Open Road" by Lavie Tidhar 9 May: "The Tome of Tourmaline" by Ken Liu 10 May: "Wrong World" by Steve J. Myers 11 May: "Great White Ship" by Lou Antonelli 14 May: "The Call" by Erin M. Hartshorn 15 May: "Dragoman" by Helen Jackson 16 May: "Monsters Big and Small" by Jakob Drud 17 May: "Hoist with an Ark to the Stars" by David Glen Larson 18 May: "The Vault" by Leslie Claire Walker 21 May: "Fantasies" by Jasmine Fahmy 22 May: "The Numbers" by Timothy Moore 23 May: "Wishes" by Patricia Ash 24 May: "Pocket" by Elizabeth Creith 25 May: "Ballad of a Hot Air Balloon-Headed Girl" by Douglas F. Warrick 28 May: "Endgame" by Thomas Canfield 29 May: "Brief Interviews with Therianthropes" by Alec Austin and Marissa Kristine Lingen 30 May: "The Girl She Truly Was" by Lauren K. Moody 31 May: "Sapience and Maternal Instincts" by Krystal Claxton

"Pirates of the Ozarks"

David Riley is working on Issue No. 8 of the annual Science Fiction Trails, and he emailed me today about my story, "Pirates of the Ozarks". He pointed out a stylistic inconsistency towards the very end that might be more of a problem that a plus. I told him I have no problem with him striking the paragraph.

 I sent "Crab Apples" off to Stanley Schmidt for consideration as a possible Probability Zero piece. Right now I have a half dozen stories in various slush piles

 My wife and I went to Longview Sunday afternoon. I am loathe to shop out of town, since I firmly believe in shopping locally, but there is no Long John Silver's in Mount Pleasant and I was craving some of their friend clams and batter-dipped fish. I stopped at the Books-a-Million there and found a copy of an illustrated book, "NASA/Art: 50 Years of Exploration". I have been thinking about writing an alternate history story set on a Mars or Moon colony, and looking over the images collected from the NASA Art Program tweaked my imagination. It may prove to be a worthwhile purchase.

"Crab Apples"

I've been working off a list, sorting story ideas from conceits, and I've worked a few of the conceits recently into flashes. This evening I finished up "Crab Apples", which like "The Return of Alfred Bester" and "The Relic" is exactly 995 words. It got into this 990 word kick after writing "Double Exposure", which has been bought by Daily Science Fiction. It came in at 991 words, and honestly, I think it's the best thing I've ever written, certainly my personal favorite. By writing a few flashes, I get the list of story ideas trimmed and have a better idea of what I really have in terms of potential stories.

"The Starship Theodora"

I got a note in the mail today from Wesley Kawato, who runs the small print magazine Nova S-F, that Issue No. 29 is almost ready for the printer. My story "The Starship Theodora" will be the feature story for the issue, according to Wesley.

Nova S-F is a nice small print magazine that been around many years, a real labor of love for Wesley. He printed my short story "Good Old Gal" is Issue No. 18 in the fall of 2006.

"The Starship Theodora" will be my third publication this year, my 64th since 2003.

Ah-choo!

I spent Monday doing some serious spring cleaning at the cabin we own near Cedar Creek Lake - about 120 miles from here - and I stirred up a lot of dust. I was practically incapacitated Tuesday and Wednesday by an allergy attack. I left work after a half day Wednesday. I'm better now, and back to the normal East Texas spring allergy attack.

Feedback on "The Centurion and the Rainman".

I don't know that Buzzy Mag's fiction has been reviewed anywhere as yet, but the comments that have been posted on the web site about my story have been very heartening:

Phil Einhorn: Will we be be seeing more of Doncard? It appears he just got this new job:) Honestly, I enjoyed the story and feel it is an introduction to life in Magtown. I liked it.

T. Glenn Bane: I love hard boiled cop dramas. You have hit a neo-noir/pulp vibe that I enjoy. Good Stuff.

John Thiel: A good picture of magic oozing loose.

Yolanda Rose: The take on autism is nice. Reminds me of an old classic SF novel where the Earth was coming out of a dampening field and intelligence gets raised so that many animals became sentient and very low functioning retarded people became geniuses.

Theresa Bane: This was a really enjoyable read. you really captured that cop drama. Wonderfully written and I hope to see more.

"The Return of Alfred Bester"

Finished another flash, took two days. For the sake of consistency - or superstition - I brought it in at 995 words, just like "The Relic". I'm dropping "The Return of Alfred Bester" in the mail to Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF.

I'm trying to get caught up on a backlog of story ideas, and in some cases, they are little more than conceits, but I seem to be spinning a few of them into bona fide flashes.

Latest tale

My original plan for today, to do some roof repair at our cabin, came a cropper when the car died in the garage. I called the wrecker; still haven't got a verdict. Since I was stuck at home, I decided to put the time to good use. I banged out a flash, "The Relic", that came in at 995 words, and dropped it Uncle Stan's lap at Analog for consideration for Probability Zero. That's the 102nd story I've written.

Got a copy of Space & Time magazine in the mail. I had forgotten they agreed to finish out any subscriptions for Realms of Fantasy. Pretty smart move, actually, I don't think I've ever seen the magazine. I will give it a read.

Recount

I went and recounted my stories from my bibliography in the Wikipedia listing, and I counted 61, so "The Centurion and the Rainman" makes 62. And now David and Mary Gray's spring issue of 4 Star Stories is live, and it leads with my story "Encounter in Camelot". features an old Texas scrap hauler, a crooked Texas cop, and The Lake of the Lake. Your view of the Arthurian mythos will never be the same...

And that makes story No. 63.

Taking stock

The publication of "The Centurion and the Rainman" By Buzzy Mag is the 61st story I've had published since June 2003. I've written 101 stories since 2002, and right now I have a dozen in various slush piles. I have six that should run by the end of this year.