(no subject)

It's snowing again. (BIG sigh.)

We have cable TV in this neighborhood-- ay-huh, ay-huh, we gots 'lektrik and telly-phones and indoor plumbin, and we ain't even in New York or Callyforny! Anyway we have cable, but it's Charter Communications. Which means expensive, and you're contributing to Paul Allen, who is Bill Gates's even-more-evil partner. If that's possible. So I'm resisting it.

I have Dish Network instead. But they don't have the local channels, or didn't until recently.

I'm going to get those. It will be more convenient, and clearer, than the rooftop rotating antenna I have now. And then I can mount an AM directional loop on the rooftop rotor, and (nods to Teffie) listen to DIRECTIONAL static. Might even be able to pick up Left Coast AM stations as I did occasionally in the old days, when the clear channel AM stations really were clear channels.

But of course we need a dish upgrade to do that. I need the new Superdish, whee. Not too bad a deal; they'll install it for only the cost of shipping it up here, which is a few pennies short of $25. And if the necessary area of the sky, the direction to the second satellite (I need to be able to pick up two satellites to get the local stations, that's the point of getting the new dish) isn't clear-- possible, here in the woods-- then they won't charge me.

Say I'm crazy, but while I'm willing to lop a few branches off the underbrush to get TV, I'm not willing to chainsaw a perfectly good tree for it. I'd rather go without any TV at all.

So I order it, and there's a long silence on the other end of the telephone line.

"This offer must be very popular where you are."

"Huh?"

"Well, the installers are booked. The first open date I have is June 19th."

I shrugged. "It's just as well. Odds are they wont' be able to get through the snowbanks back there until then."

***

In other news, I have taken a certain person's gentle clue-by-four to heart and am submitting several of my short pieces to various venues. At the very least I'll add to my rejetion collection this way.

Ace in the Hole, an under-1000 word SF story about a slave who is willing to bet her life to win a poker game with her owner, is off to a company that publishes... coffee can labels. With poems and stories on them. Anyone who knows me and my particular addiction knows that no publishing venue could be more appropriate.

I'm sending Christmas to Big Name American SF Mag I Don't Like. In spite of being a depressing tale of hopelessness and futility of the kind the editor there likes, it's a good story.

The other two Harv stories are still here. I don't know where to send Dragonfly Seven-One. It would be ideal for Analog, but they already rejected it. Asimov's wants character-driven stories. Of the Harv stories, that would be Christmas. The other two are puzzle pieces. That's what Harv does; he's faced with a puzzle and he solves it. His character, while popular with my friends, really doesn't develop much; that's not the point of these stories.

So I'm still looking for a place to send Dragonfly Seven-One. As for Written in the Stars, I'm not sending it. I like that story, but I have this nagging doubt about it, this nagging feeling that something in it sucks. From experience I know I must be right, but I just can't pin down the problem. But there is a problem, I will find it, I will fix it, and the story will be much better as a result of it.

For an example of this, there's The Language of Emotion. I sat on that for a year because of that hidden-suckage feeling, then I rewrote it completely. Sat on it for another couple of months wondering why. Then fixed three paragraphs in it, and now.. now I am as happy with this as I've ever been with anything I wrote. Gods know it's not perfect, I doubt anything I ever write will be. Perhaps nothing ever is. But I've polished the facets, and imho, now it shines. It's e-submitted to a webzine that pays pretty well and wants stories that don't quite fit in the normal categories, and I think this one qualifies.

Let's see.. I sent Moonchaser, which is an excerpt from Flanker Book 1, to a paying furry magazine. They say you should "strangle your babies" which means that since I love Moonchaser, I really should delete it from Flanker. And true, it's a too-clever piece of writing which really doesn't have that much to do with the main Flanker story, except to warn the reader that in Flanker's universe even impossible things are possible, and even things that never happened, did. Hell with it. It stays in. But in the meantime, because it is so far outside the main line of the novel, it stands alone quite well as a short story.

Finally, I think, Perchance to Dream is another e-sub to a place that wants horror stories. I like Perchance to Dream, although it's pretty gruesome for me. Perhaps what I like best about it is that while there probably is a supernatural element to it, if you really wanted to, if you really forced it, you could say that everything that happens can be explained as chance and as medical symptoms. I really like that. It adds an element of logic to the horror that, for me anyway, makes it all the more horrible.

Well, enough ego-stroking. I've got to get to the Useless Post Office before it closes. DAMN, it's snowing hard...