Peter and I went out to Sea Dragon for dinner tonight. His fortune cookie said: “You have a natural awareness of currents flowing underneath the surface of events.” Nothing too interesting there. BUT MY FORTUNE COOKIE SAID:
“You will become an accomplished writer.”
Two fresh submissions:
sub#63 – to Shimmer (my 3rd sub there)
sub#64 – to Lone Star Stories (my 7th sub there)
One fresh rejection:
rej#53 – a 7-day rejection from Baen’s Universe.
* * *
I’ve been making slow but steady progress on my latest WIP. Averaging about 500 new words per day, plus tinkering with all the words from the previous days. So it’s at around 2,700 words at the moment, and probably around a third of the way finished. I’m hoping that now that the story is a bit more hammered out I’ll be able to pick …
The path to Okunoin Temple, lined with a half million tombs.
Peter and I spent one night at the Sekishoin temple on Mt. Koya. To get from Kyoto to Mt. Koya, we took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka, then took a subway to a different train (the JR lines, which we rode most of the time, do not go up to Mt. Koya). The train ride was about 90 minutes long, and after that we took a 10 minute cable car ride, followed by a 15 …
A 6-day “didn’t work for me” rejection from JJA at F&SF. Austin is somewhat closer to New Jersey than Seattle was, so their already quick rejections will now come even faster than usual!
It’s been a month since I arrived in Texas, and I am pleased to announce that all the boxes have been unpacked. There’s still art to hang on the walls, little piles of things that haven’t found a home, and various other apartment-set-up activities, but we’ve got the furniture mostly where it goes and there are no more boxes. Yay!
Two rejections today:
My 50th rejection! A 74-day rejection from Writers of the Future, for the quarter ending June 30th. This was my seventh submission to the contest.
R#51 – A 1-day friendly reject from Lone Star Stories. Gotta love the quick turnaround.
Two submissions today:
Sub#60 – to Baen’s Universe (my second sub there)
Sub#61 – to F&SF (my 11th sub there)
And, last but not least, 500 words on my new story.
While in Japan, we visited many beautiful temples and shrines, especially while we were in Kyoto. The temple pictured above is the Kinkakuji (Gold Pavilion) Temple, and the outside of the building is coated with real gold. Temples like this one that are popular with tourists often charged an entry fee (generally around $5), and then had signs directing tourists on a specific route through the temple grounds.
After a month-and-a-half break from sending out submissions:
Sub58 – to Lone Star Stories (my 6th sub there)
Sub59 – to Analog (my 2nd sub there)
This gets me back up to 8 stories in circulation. I’ve also outlined all but the last scene for a brand new story, which I’m feeling pretty good about, and am hoping to have written by the end of the week. It’s nice to get back to writing after the six week moving/traveling break.
While in Japan, we had the opportunity to ride several forms of public transportation, all without being able to read Japanese. Many of the signs were written in both Japanese and English, and most of the time individual stops were broadcast over loudspeaker as well, and so we listened to the stops to keep track of where we were, and know when to get off. We spent a lot of time on trains ( wrote a lovely post here with step-by-step advice on taking the trains), but at various points of our trip we rode on subways, buses, and …
Now that I’m back, and recovered from jet lag (and the flu I picked up on the way home), I figured I’d do a few blog posts on the highlights from the trip my husband and I recently took (to Japan). First up is the Tsukiji fish market, a bustling market where it is possible to buy almost anything that lives in the sea in the early hours of the morning. Well, most mornings. We thought that it would be a great idea to visit the market the first day in Tokyo, seeing as how we’d likely be awake anyway …
