The message: “Thank you for offering your story to Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. After careful consideration, we’re sorry to tell you that we will not be using it; you are free to submit it elsewhere.”

So, no hints either on what was wrong or that they didn’t like. At least it was carefully considered – that is a definite plus

Anyway, on to the next market (still trying to figure out who that will be).

I am mentioned as a reader! John asked me to read it because I had not yet read the first book in the series and he wanted to make sure things still made sense to me. I made it through a couple chapters (if I recall correctly) before things got a bit confusing, but I applaud John’s idea to make each book stand a bit on its own.

I hope he gets done with it soon because I am really looking forward to reading the first book (I’ve had it in my To Read pile for almost a year, I believe).

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.

I was able to assemble a group of 15 or so people who are totally awesome and great leaders. They all did an awesome job. The families and kids seemed to all have a fantastic time. We had sledding runs, cardboard and duct tape sled building, snow sculptures and snow shoeing, snow bowling, and great food. We had prizes and patches for all the kids (except some kids took more than they should have, as well as some of the staff gifts – but they were excited and probably didn’t do it on purpose).

Being on this committee also helped me get back into helping my oldest son (8) work on his Rank Advancements. We sat down and marked off lots of things the day after Family Freeze.

I am contemplating doing it again next year. If we did it, we’d probably have 4 sessions spread out over 2 days so that we could get the best bang for our setting-up-buck.

There is much I would do better/differently next year if I do decide to help out.

But, one of the best things for me is that I’ve been contemplating about what things I am truly passionate about. I was having trouble coming up with anything. But, then, how could I forget about scouting? I am definitely passionate about it. If I could make a living with it (or if I was independently wealthy), I would definitely love going into work at the council office (as a District Executive or something) every day.

I really needed to hear Dan Wells’ presentation on plotting and pacing. It is exactly where I am right now in the tree.love novel. And it helped me get through the little block I was having. I was able to get some great brainstorming in during some of the more, shall we say, content-light presentations of the conference.

I’ll share my notes about this soon.

I was talking with my mom recently about our youngest, who had H1N1 last week (he’s much better now, thanks!).

My parents live in California, where the H1N1 stories in the news are fairly common and tend to highlight cases that seem to be people who are not in the “high-risk” groups, providing details about this pandemic. While, here in Utah, I really don’t hear very much on the news, and the stories tend to be about ways to stay healthy and about how this is just another flu and the death rate is as expected.

So, while we weren’t too worried, I’m sure my mom was kind of freaking out.

It got me thinking about why a Democratic state would focus on the negatives and a Republican state would be more optimistic. (This is where the “party” lines comes in). After all, I am a fairly optimistic person.

I’m not so sure this has to do with pessimism versus optimism as a nature of certain parties, though. While some may argue this, I think it goes deeper, into the world view of those in each party.

Democrats tend to be more focused on the poor, the downtrodden, the under-represented. Republicans tend to be more focused on free markets and improving from the top, keeping government out of our lives. These are simplistic definitions, obviously, but I feel they are useful here, if not completely black-and-white.

In California, the focus seems to be on these suffering people and how bad this is, how we need help to fix the problem. In Utah, the focus seems to be on how we can handle this problem ourselves and reassuring us that we can do it.

In some ways I think these world views tie in with how people take on the “global warming” issue, even. From the, in my opinion, exaggerated sky-is-falling outcries on the left, to the nothing-to-fear-but-fear-itself, we-are-not-the-cause anti-response of the far right. The answer here, and for H1N1, is somewhere in the middle – a complex, problematic issue that is not easily solvable, nor should it be ignored.

Interestingly, one of the audience members asked him how to change universities to be less liberal. The idea being that liberals would need to change so they could help people.

And yet, isn’t the definition of “conservative” that of someone who does not want change? Therefore, in order to get universities to change, by definition, we would need them to be less conservative.

Sometimes people are so blinded by their world view (on both sides) that they don’t see the illogic in their stances.

I’m still really tired, but I got back Saturday night from Akela’s Council (Cub Scout Leader Training). I was on staff and felt like I was still a participant in many ways – I have a lot to learn still about the scouting program.

But, I had a great time and really enjoyed being there, despite the lack of sleep.

Hope I get asked again some time – it was way awesome!

Uugaa chucka, Cherokee!