Getting back to normal

With the crush of holiday traveling and deadlines at work, I obviously have been strapped for time to keep things updated here. But things are leveling out a bit.
Just saw that Bewildering Stories has picked my story "The Queen of Guilty Pleasures" as one of the choices for its editors' year-end retrospective. I had two stories published with them this year. "Won't You Come Home, Bill Buckley?" was published in February. "Queen" was published in October.
One of my honorable mentions in this year's "Year's Best Science Fiction" was for "I Got You", which they published in two parts last year. That was the first HM Bewildering ever got.

at work

sloppy posting. the wassail was served up at work.

Holiday Silliness

Well, the day is almost here. It's hard not to be in a good mood. At the other day, someone whipped up a batch of "wassail". They made it with apple juice and 7-Up.

Which led me to comment, "if you make wassail with 7-Up, does that make it Wassup?"

Whoops!

I took a break while posting the last entry, and then never got around to the topic that my title referred to - my story "The Hideaway". I've just posted it on my web site. I had seven stories published this year, and by the Dec. 31 I plan to have them all archived on my web site for everyone to see (www.cedarhillsentinel.com). "The Hideaway" was published by Alienskin in June, and after the obvious choices ("Rocket for the Republic" in Asimov's and "The Cast Iron Dybbuk" in Andromeda), it was my next favorite choice of the year. (And, since I took my payment from Andromeda in copies, it actually was the second most profitable story I sold this year.)
It's another monologue story - like "Rocket" - and I though it had some snappy lines. I especially liked the description of what happened when the grizzly attacked the hunters' tent:
"It was probably about 2 a.m. when the grizzly tore open the tent. Tucker had gone to sleep with a bag of Cheese Waffies under his pillow.
The tent came apart like a thin tissue after a big sneeze."
There are places in that story I almost sound like Mickey Spillane - which makes sense in context.

"The Hideaway"

I mentioned a while back that a bad combination of carpal tunnel syndrome plus a pinched nerved has contributed to my wearing a wrist brace for the past few weeks. That's obviously slowed down my posting. I've also had to save my typing time for work, since as a newspaper editor, I write a lot, too.
I also think that a very old thumb injury may have factored in. When I was a freshman in high school and on the footbsll team, a kid once tackled a dummy I was holding when I wasn't looking, and it tore the cartilage of my left thumb. It twinged for maybe 20 years but went away, and I had forgotten about it. That may be part of the problem, too.
Also, I was working extra from Sept. 20 to Nov. 28 because a reporter was out on worker's comp and the company didn't replace her in the meantime. I had to essentially work two jobs and do the equivalent of 72 hours a week of work - since I work 40 hours a week and the other personb worked 32. My hand was at its worst right before she returned to work. One more week at that pace and I don't know what would have happened.
A nurse practioner I visited with suggested the wrist brace, plus aspirin as an anti-inflammatory (thankfully, I do real well with aspirin and I can pop five at a time with no ill effects. She had suggested I might want to tale Aleeve, instead.) She also said Vitamin B-6 is good for long-term nerve health (I already knew that). Since I have Vegemiter at home, I stepped up the pace of getting into that. I'm trying to eat some every day.

Some thoughts on "Dialogue"

I just posted "Dialogue" under my archives of my web site. As my stories go, it had one of the more convoluted histories.
I wrote it almost three years ago as an entry in the Writers of the Future. It was mailed off right at the end of 2002. WOTF lost it for a full year; it didn't turn up again until late 2003.
In the meanwhile I had submitted it to ASIM, and it was the first story I ever submitted that wasn't rejected outright. It passed the first reading. In the end, it didn't fly, but I finally sold "Cast Iron Dybbuk" to them a year and a half later.
It centers of a meeting with an alien race called the Ymilans. Later in 2003, after attending ConDFW in Dallas, I write a story for Jayme Blaschke at RevolutionSF called "Silvern" and set it on my envisioned Ymilan world. "Silvern" was the first story I ever had published.
After bouncing around a couple of years, "Dialogue" finally also found a home at Revolution - which makes it seem its a kind of prequel of sorts. Of course, the funny thing is, it is actually the older of the two stories.
"Dialogue" is the only story I had published at RevolutionSF this year, and since Blaschke is leaving, I have no idea of what kind of relationship I will have with them in the future. I tell ya' though, I'll always be grateful to RevSF and Blaschke for giving me a little validation when I needed it.
The left hand seems to be feeling better. But now, the transmission on the pickup is dying. I think the clutch is gone. If it's actually the transmission, the truck's toast, because a new transmission will be double what the truck is worth.

Slower

My pace of posting has slowed up a bit. About a couple of weeks ago I developed pinched nerve in my left hand. It may be carpal tunnel, it may be the result of my hitting my elbow, or both. It didn't clear up quickly, so I've taken to wearing a wrist brace and slowing down my typing a bit.
Insofar as my job involves typing, it's hard for me to avoid it altogether. But I've definitely tried to slow down.
A week ago I had a real good writing session one night, but it really seemed to aggravate the problem and I haven't gotten back to the story yet.
Temperature was down to 29 degrees this morning, which is really cold for this part of Texas.