Vote!
Fantasy is running a poll where you can vote on your favorite stories of 2007. You can vote for up to three stories, and the poll will be open until the end of January.
If you liked “Time to Say Goodnight,” go vote for it :)
Category: Uncategorized
“Time to Say Goodnight”
My story, “Time to Say Goodnight,” is now available at Fantasy Magazine. Check it out, it’s free :)
End-o-Year Statistics
2007 isn’t quite over yet, but I’ll be visiting family over the holidays, so the stats shouldn’t change much between now and then. Statistical summary of 2007:
Stories Written: 12
Novelette/Novellas written: 1
Novels Written: 1.25
Submissions: 66
Rejections: 56
Sales: 1
Stories currently out at market: 10
Stories Published*: 1
I feel like I did a bit better this year than the statistics suggest, in that I’ve had a lot of near misses. One of my stories was a (non-placing) finalist at Writers of the Future, and several stories have gotten past slush readers …
Trail of Lights
Every year Austin sets up a Trail of Lights at Zilker Park. Peter and I went last night, so I got to play around with my camera (the photograph shown above, for instance, is one where I zoomed out while taking a long exposure). My favorite display was the tunnel of stars near the exit:
As usual, I’ve got more photos up on my flickr site.
Oatmeal vs. Steel Cut Oatmeal
I can’t stand regular oatmeal. The flavor is fine, but the gloppy texture just doesn’t do it for me. Most oatmeal is made with rolled oats — oats that have been hulled, steamed, rolled, and flaked so that they cook quickly. Steel cut oats (aka Irish oats), on the other hand, are hulled oats cut into two or three pieces, rather than being squashed flat.
Steel cut oats take longer to cook, but they have a lovely chewy …
Satsumas! I have them!
After seeing Gord’s post mentioning that he had a big box of tasty satsuma/mandarin oranges, I went out and got some for myself. Yum!
Review of Fantasy Magazine #7
There’s a review of Fantasy Magazine #7 (which includes my story, “Tending the Mori Birds”) at The Fix.* This is my first review, and I was thrilled to see that it said nice things like:
“It’s a simple, elegant idea, and Yoachim’s telling of it is simple and elegant to match.”
I don’t think the issue has been officially released yet, but according to the Fantasy Magazine website, it should come out soon.
Yay!
* Thanks to tinaconnolly for calling the review to my attention!
Banana Muffins
Two ripe bananas were transformed into muffins:
I had to search around a bit for a muffin recipe that only called for 2 bananas (most want 3), and ended up using this one. They go really well with honey butter (which Maureen had at Thanksgiving — tasty and easy, just mix honey with room-temperature butter).
Sweet Treat
There’s a place three blocks from my apartment that has gelato and cupcakes. (I suspect they have a lot of other things as well, but I’ve never gotten past the gelato and cupcakes.)
This particular cupcake is a vanilla cupcake with lemon filling.
It was tasty.
Fortunately I have yoga class tonight to help burn off all the lemon-vanilla calories from my afternoon treat :)
Leftover Turkey
Turkeys were on sale at the grocery store the day after Thanksgiving, so I picked one up and roasted it for Sunday dinner, along with a couple of the traditional accompaniments. The turkey was a relatively small (9lb) bird, but with only two of us eating it, I still ended up with plenty of leftovers to play around with.
So for lunch today I made turkey and dumplings, with leftover turkey and homemade turkey stock:
