An important story for me was accepted by NewMyths.com, “The Warmth of Sun in Winter.” It was the first in which I consciously tried to be positive and vowed not to see someone obliterated. I’ve also found that more positive stories are more marketable. That doesn’t stop me from writing grim, dystopian ones–because I can’t help it–but my goal is to at least alternate between something grim and something a bit brighter, even if “a bit brighter” means only subtly indicating that a story happens have a apocalyptic event.

Meanwhile other stories were rejected and promptly sent elsewhere. I don’t like playing rejectomancy, though, or even publicly tracking submissions because, being very competitive, I then start rooting for the rejects. So they shall go unmentioned. The stories are good, I think. Someone will pick them up sooner or later. My average number of subs per accepted piece is 9.

What keeps me going is that I haven’t mastered even one of these, and I mentioned how competitive I am, right?

Very good week as a writer. I had a story accepted by Lightspeed, Fade to Red, a triptych of interviews whose form was inspired by this interview by Bruce Fretts with Andrew Jarecki.

Plus the Beam Me Up podcast will read my AE story Automatic Sky. This is my second podcast acceptance, after MedusPod took my 365 Tomorrow story The Accidental Tower. The fun part will be coming up the sound effects for folding space and the ring tone for an ansible.

Sad week as a reader, though. After 35 years, I’ve finished reading all of Jack Vance’s novels, finishing with his last, Lurulu.  It was OK ending to an excellent career. Now I have only 25 scattered stories to go. Buying a used copy of The Dark Side of the Moon will get me 13 of them, as this chart shows (because I’m that obsessed):

Having created my own bibliography with dates and variant titles to track my progress, I was a bit bummed to find this bibliography today. It did clear up the variant titles given to five stories I need to read that are used in the Spatterlight collections. I don’t mind reading Vance as ebooks, but I kind of want to add to my shelf of titles.

Of course, when I’m finally done, I’ll do the obvious thing: pick up The Dying Earth again and start over.

I would say the toughest problem I face as a writer is not trying to sound like Vance, however oversubtle I try to be.