In fact, I just sent the story off to Intergalactic Medicine Show. I hope they at least give me some comments on it if they don’t like it, because I can’t figure out what to do to fix it, except make it longer by resolving the whole plot. And that would probably put me into novella territory.

I am also gearing up to start working on my novel. I have a deadline of October, so I need to get moving on it.

I finally have the plot down for tree.love. It is going to be awesome, if I do say so myself (and I just did). I had lots of trouble figuring out a way to make the protagonist actually win in the end because I had such good ideas for the antagonist. I suppose that is a good problem to have. I don’t want it to be an easy victory, after all, especially given my small criticisms of the endings of the Twilight saga and The Host. I need to post more on here, and plotting would definitely be a good topic (note to self).

But, what I’m really writing about today is that I submitted a story to the Writers of the Future contest. I got it in before the end of March, so I still have a month and a half or more to wait until I hear how the story did. I am not getting my hopes up too high, but I feel like I wrote the very best story I could. It was the Bamboo Lessons story that I started a couple years ago. I’ve had my writing group look at it a couple times, as well as a few other friends and family members to get feedback. It really helped to bring the story together and to tie it up better than I could have imagined.

I like reading short stories, but I’m not sure if I am a short story writer. I don’t think I always have the right idea for what a complete story is. And, I love to spend time with characters and situations that just can’t be done easily in a short form. So, if I don’t even get an honorable mention, I will probably stop working on short stories and spend more time on novel-length works. Not that I couldn’t learn and do better next time, but I feel like this story is the best short story I can do right now.

On the other hand, if the story does well, I’ll still work on novels, but I’ll start more in earnest on revising my short stories and getting them out to publishers.

I’ll post an update as soon as I know.