January Roundup

In January, Nancy Fulda at Anthology Builder accepted two of my stories: The Minotaur's Rabbit, published in Apex; and Flight, published in Quantum Muse. Nancy particularly liked Flight, a retelling of the Icarus myth. If you're looking for some short pieces to round out your anthology, maybe one of these will suit you!

Rich Horton's 2007 roundup of Shimmer: "On the whole, quite a nice little magazine!", with particular mentions of stories by Amal El-Mohtar, Jeremiah Tolbert, Michael Livingston, James Cambias, and other luminaries.

The Art issue is off to the printers and should be in our hands mid-February. We'll be announcing the TOC and generally starting to make a fuss about it over the next few days - stay tuned!

And, the obligatory month-end goal summary. This year, instead of focusing on any grand goals, I'm focusing on building small habits that will support larger goals. So instead of having a goal of "write a novel," my goal is "develop a habit of writing every day." I had 4 goals to focus on this month--perhaps too many, but whatever.

Goal 1: Read a short story every day. Only missed 3 days; on most days, I read 4 or 5 stories. So I'm calling this one a habit successfully formed, and taking it off the list of things to focus on.

Goal 2: eat vegetables every day. I managed to cram in some vegetables on 19 days, which is a good start--but this one stays on the focus list for February.

Goal 3: exercise daily. Only 14 days of this--so it stays on the list.

Goal 4: write daily. Only 12 days. I've realized that I don't have any strong "start writing" triggers. I mean, I read short stories on my breaks at work and in the bath at night; I know I need to exercise before dinner; but I don't have anything that says "write now." So probably in February I will be experimenting with different triggers. If, say, I condition myself to bang out my words right when I get home from work, there's a better chance of it happening than if it's just an unspecified "sometime" that I end up forgetting about most of the time. We'll see.

Two periods of being sick this month, which sucks; here's hoping February doesn't knock me on my ass as much as January did.

And now, on to February.