Color me relieved

I had an e-mail first thing this morning from one of my co-contributors in the Corpse Blossoms anthology, the guy who was next in line to receive the signature pages after me. As you may recall, I got them just before Rita was supposed to hit and I sent them out the Monday after. That’s nearly two weeks ago and they were going Priority Mail, so even accounting for a couple of days of discombobulation due to the storm and the power outages and the gas shortage, the pages should have gotten there several days ago.

A sinking feeling gripped me. There was no tracking info because the editors had included forwarding postage in the package for each contributor to slap on the box along with the next person’s mailing label, so I had just dropped the box off at the post office. Yuck. What happens now? I reluctantly e-mailed the editors to advise them of the potential problem.

Luck was with us, though I’m not sure still what transpired. Somehow, the box ended up in the hands of another contributor, one who had already signed the pages. The best I can guess is that somehow the mailing label got ripped off and his was visible underneath. I’m not sure. Since several people had already signed the pages before they got to me, it would have been a setback for the signed version of the anthology to lose them.

Phew.

I signed and sent back the release form for my HPD ride-along today. If all goes according to plan, a week from tomorrow night I’ll be riding the mean streets. Whoo-hee. If I get shot, assaulted, robbed, injured in a car chase or bitten by the police dog, it’s my own damned fault. At least, that’s pretty much what the waiver says.

Received a check from Dark Cloud Press for my contribution (“False Witness”) in Thou Shalt Not, due out sometime next year. I love editors who pay on acceptance. Working with DCP has been a joy from the beginning.

I unearthed a nearly complete short story while looking for something else in a stack of papers last night, so I’m back at it again. I did some setting research today and I think I know how to finish it off, if I could just stop myself from editing and re-editing the part already written and move along to the ending. I knew the ending when I started the story, but for some reason I lost faith in that conclusion. Then I came up with another idea, only to realize it made no sense in the context of what was already written. I’m back on track again, I hope. My original concept of the ending was the right one. Just gotta get those 500-1000 words down on the page and stop messing around with the 2500 already written!