Week of June 19-25

[mrissa]

Two rejections, two sales. To my way of thinking, that's a decent week for short stories.

I'm feeling better, though still not up to par, today. Having oatmeal for breakfast and warm tomato basil soup with melted Parmesan for lunch has helped. The plan for dinner is Kraft dinner. Mmmmmm, radioactive cheese powder. (I know it's not the same thing as real macaroni and cheese. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be Kraft dinner.) The last of my T3 is starting to wear off, so it'll be Advil from here, and I think Advil will be just fine.

kythiaranos's comment about not keeping the teeth reminded me of one of my favorite stories of my Gran. (Gran was my great-grandmother, Grandpa's mom.) The year she was 90 or 91, she had two surgeries. The first was a double radical mastectomy (which for a woman like my Gran meant radical -- she was one of those little old Norwegian ladies who's half boob by mass), and the second was cataract removal. They sent her home from the cataract surgery with her cataracts in a jar, and she took them out of the fridge to show us, marveling at what she'd been trying to see through. "Hey Gran," I said, "why didn't they give you the results of your last surgery?" She grinned: "Oh yes, honey! I could have had them bronzed and hung them in the living room!"

I loved my Gran so much. I still miss her.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why, thank you! Gran and I got along very well indeed. I was extremely fortunate to have close relationships with two of my great-grandmothers into college or beyond.

My Gran was a scandal and a shock in Pierre, SD, when she was young. Bobbed her hair, married a divorcé, left her mother home with the kids while she ran her share of the business she and Great-Grandpa started. I'm amazed Pierre, SD, survived the experience.

Gran is the reason I've always said I wanted to name a daughter Emily. Her name was Emilia Charlotta, but she went by Emilie (or MLE when she wanted to be silly). Now people are naming their kids that in hordes and droves because it "sounds historical." It actually is historical for me, foolish people! Get your own history! Yarg!

Ahem.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

This may be a silly question, but where do you send your stories? You get a lot more traffic than I do-- I have five out right now and that's with all but two markets I can think of. Where are these other places to sell that I don't know about?
Or you just have really, really good response times. And I like this Gran character.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Try www.ralan.com. The lists there may not all be acceptable for the stories you write or the rates you'd like to get paid, but there are lots of different markets out there. No, I don't have really, really good response times, sadly. I do not have the editorial love magic. I just have a ton of stuff out there.

It sounds trite, but everyone liked Gran. Seriously. I never met anyone who didn't like her, and for as opinionated as she was, that was saying something. When she died, the employees at the gas station where she got her gas every Saturday sent flowers.

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

I know ralan.com, but I'm really bad at figuring out markets. There's a pretty sizeable part of me that says that I'm going to hit a really bad one or a scam or something if I don't know anyone who's submitted there. But if you have had no problems, then I shall pretend that you have investigated every last one of them.

That sounds like my mother's mother. Only not the opinionated part, exactly. There are stories of her that we pull out at every gathering. A little different from my dad's side of the family, where the stories are, um, occasionally grisly.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'd say I've had no problems, but scams, it seems to me, are much, much less common than well-intentioned markets that get disorganized or go under altogether. There are markets to which I don't submit because the editors and I have fundamentally different views of professional behavior, but several of my friends have had fine experiences with even those same markets, so it's going to vary a lot. I've had markets go ages without responding, but that's kind of industry standard, and if I get too fed up, I pull the story and go on with my life. But I've never had a market not pay me for work, say, or publish the story without permissions, or anything like that.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Congrats on *both* acceptances. That's a pretty fine week, indeed.

[pameladean]

Sales, whee!

And I love your stories about your Gran. I was trying to figure out when she was born, to be so good at being scandalous, so I appreciate your comment upstream. Not, perhaps, that she couldn't have figured out how to be scandalous regardless of timing, but the hair-bobbing is so great.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Her father died in the influenza epidemic at the end of the Great War, and it looks like she fell upon the Twenties pretty whole-heartedly. Which is why I have a soft spot for books set in the Twenties: they remind me of my little Gran.

The best picture of her after the ones where she and Great-Grandpa were courting is from when she was in her 60s (which was also the world's late '60s) and was riding a motorcycle in a pantsuit and ruffled blouse.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

The plan for dinner is Kraft dinner.

We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinner!
But we *would* eat Kraft dinner.
Of course, we'd just eat more of it.
With expensive ketchups.
That's right, all the finest dijon ketchups!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I quoted that line on my way downstairs to dinner.

No ketchup, however. Why would I ever eat ketchup when the world has barbecue sauce in it? (And I do not bbq my Kraft dinner in any case.)