I finished up the most recent short story yesterday afternoon. I trimmed a few scenes, but made up for it by adding a whole other one (I’ll be curious if anyone coming back to this post can figure out which scene was added). It’s a good piece, one of the better mysteries-per-se that I’ve written. The characterization, I admit, leaves something to be desired: this is a puzzle piece, honestly, and while I think it’s fair, it doesn’t really transcend the genre.

However, I do believe that it is done, and so sent it out today. For some reason I feel like I really want a fast response on this one. Maybe it’s just because I already have two other pieces on submission (The Necromancer Negotiates to Daily Science Fiction, and The Body and the Bomb to Asimov’s) that may take a while, but I’d like a quick up-or-down from a good SF market: and that translates to Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine as a first stop. They’re quick, they’re respected, and having read them on and off for years, think it would be a good home.

While I was at the post office, I picked up a couple priority mail envelopes and a book of stamps, and I’ll be signing up for the USPS’s print-your-own-postage program so that postal submissions are less of a pain in the ass in the future. That makes it easier to convince myself to submit to couple markets that I like: particularly, I think that Analog is a good home for some of my stories, but the combination of postal-only submissions (which cost me money, remember, and until now also cost me additional time and effort) and month-long response times has so far put them in the second tier compared to markets with either a rapid turnaround or that cost me nothing. Keep in mind that (going by average response rates listed on Duotrope) it could take well over six months to exhaust just the electronic submissions markets that pay professional rates.

On a side note, the printer driver for my Mac seems to routinely cause bad behavior when printing to my new Samsung printer via USB. After 12 pages it starts repeating a line and then churning out blank pages. I can print the same file from my Windows desktop just fine. Highly frustrating.