A good week for rejection

Editors like to gang up on me. It’s a conspiracy. They send e-mails back and forth to establish the timing. And then…whammo. Four rejections in four days. The response times range from three weeks to eight months, so the colluders really have their shit together. I’ve been remiss in getting stories back into circulation, so I have a lot of gaps next to story titles on my submission board. Maybe I’ll address that this weekend.

I also have to write a new Cemetery Dance column this weekend, my first in over a year. This is for issue #60. #59 is reportedly at the print shop. The last time I wrote a column was shortly after I got back from visiting The Mist movie set. I missed the original e-mail that gave the columnists their deadlines, so this is a bit of a scramble for me. Looks like a busy weekend ahead.

I finished the first raw draft of the current short story this morning. I hacked it to pieces in hardcopy last night, keyed in the changes this morning and made another editing pass through it. It ended up around 2250 words, and the flow is quite a bit better than in its original incarnation. I sent it off to my first reader and plan to ignore it over the weekend while I get the column done and story submissions handled.

The Brass Verdict is the new Michael Connelly, due out in October. The protagonist is Mickey Haller, from The Lincoln Lawyer, a first person narrator who sounds and feels completely different from Harry Bosch, Connelly’s main character. In fact, the first time we see Bosch through Haller’s eyes, I didn’t know who it was, didn’t even suspect. Bosch’s presence has been low-key so far in the book, but I expect that to change. Haller has been on “medical leave” from his law practice for a year and finds himself leaping back in when an old colleague is murdered and he is named to take over the practice. I’m enjoying the book a lot.

I didn’t record Fear Itself last night. I haven’t heard anyone crowing about what a good episode it was.

Jay Clarke (Michael Slade) and I have been sending links to news items to each other lately because of the case of the disembodied feet going on up in British Columbia. It seems like something right up Slade’s alley. The foot count was all the way up to six at one point before the most recent discovery was revealed as a fake. Still, it’s intriguing to say the least.

The heat is definitely on around here. My car thermometer registers over 100° most evenings when I leave work. The plants in the yard are wilting and the lawn is an earthy shade of brown. It keeps threatening to rain, but the threats are idle. There was a dilly of a storm in Houston yesterday, but all it did up here was grumble and rumble.