Last week I asked a collegue if she was looking forward to the Easter Holidays. She said, “It’s not a holiday. It’s just a change of activity.” How right she was. We only get Holy Week off school, and it zipped past somewhat faster than a headless chicken. But I got 5 submissions sent off, set up a web site for my friend Norma and cleared up some of the…
We’ve just finished Carnival here. Both my son’s school and the school where I work shut for the week, and we’ve had friends visiting from the UK. I had hoped to do loads of stuff around the house, but instead I’ve had fun and submitted some stories. I actually submitted seven stories in February, which is almost back to normal. The ideas are flowing again. Now I just need to…
I have a new writing job. I’ve become the Comments Editor at HeroicStories. People email in comments on the stories, and it’s my job to chose which comments to run (which is most of them) and edit them until they say what the author would have said if they’d known how to write well. The trick is to make the English clear and correct, maintain house style (American spelling, give…
Last year I submitted 35 stories. That netted me four acceptances and nineteen rejections, and the other twelve haven’t replied yet. Two of those will probably reply later, and six might still reply. Call it four acceptances and twenty-three rejections. That’s the best ratio I’ve had in a long time. Incidentally, the last submission of the year broke the land speed record for getting into print. I sent my dark…
My son, Julio, was telling me he was nervous. “It feels like a helicopter in my tummy.” I told him that most people describe it as butterflies. Then I explained that the tingly feeling was caused by your body sending the blood away from digestion and towards to the big muscles, making you strong for an emergency. “So the heli in your belly gives you more welly.” When you’re nine…
A couple of weeks ago I went to a Christmas dinner. We stuffed our faces, of course, and drank quite a lot (we’d left the car at home), and then, while everybody was feeling mellow, they brought round the raffle tickets. Now I’m not a fan of national lotteries. Tickets for the big Christmas lottery in Spain cost €20, and your chances of winning are tiny. I think I’ve probably…