kaleidotrope

Happy Father’s Day

I was woken up first thing this morning by my father, asking me to help him push one of the cars into the street because the battery had died. And, well, today is Father’s Day, so who am I to say no? It was incredibly hot and muggy outside, though, even before nine o’clock (which is what constitutes “first thing” on a weekend), so after we jump-started the car and poked at one of the taillights (which wasn’t working yesterday and might be the source of the problem), I came back inside and tried to go back to sleep for a while.

I mostly failed at that, but I did spend the better part of the day indoors, within the protective bubble of air conditioning. I watched this week’s Doctor Who Confidential and largely completed the Sunday crossword. (I liked this week’s a lot more than last’s.) I spent a little time out in the backyard, taking some photographs and some video, and reading a few stories submitted to Kaleidotrope, but the humidity got the best of me after not too long. And it’s maybe good that it did, because not half an hour later it poured rain for fifteen or twenty minutes.

I’m still getting over this cold — and now thoroughly convinced it is a cold, and not just allergies. It’s mostly just a nagging cough now, which, with any luck, will be gone before long. I’m feeling a lot better, so that’s good.

After dinner, my mother and I gave my father some Father’s Day gifts (mostly gift cards). My sister will be visiting next weekend, but she called to wish him a happy day. My father, unfortunately, had to attend a wake for an old family friend this afternoon, so we didn’t go out to eat or anything special.

Mostly, it was just a quiet Sunday.

Body shots

I had a pretty decent, if largely uneventful, Saturday. I got a little more caught up on Kaleidotrope slush, finally reading everything submitted earlier than last month. And I watched this week’s episode of Doctor Who, which I quite enjoyed. Next week’s looks like another everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink’s-kid-brother sort of episode, but you certainly can’t accuse Steven Moffat of not having a plan. This evening I also watched Jennifer’s Body, which I can’t pretend to have enjoyed very much at all. Less than halfway through, I switched the lights back on and pulled out my iPad for distraction. Scott Tobias and Kyle Ryan go a long way towards explaining what’s wrong with the movie. It’s like a very badly written version of Ginger Snaps. I wish I could say the movie got better as it went — I genuinely enjoyed Diablo Cody’s previous movie, Juno and the one episode of United States of Tara I’ve seen — but I think it would be wrong to lie. Better to just move on…dot org. (Ugh.)

I did manage to get caught up, ever so briefly, in today’s World Cup match between the United States and England. I like soccer — I played for several years, up until sixth grade, and tried out (very unsuccessfully) for my high school team — but professional matches can appear to be very boring, with only brief spikes in excitement when someone gets close to scoring a goal. Those appearances might be deceptive — the rest of the world can’t be completely wrong, can they? — but I don’t think I’ll be getting up first thing tomorrow to watch the US in their next match, or any of the other matches. If I happen to catch some more, I’ll maybe watch, the same way I watched this year’s Olympics, but that’s probably it.

Beyond that, it was mostly just a quiet Saturday.

Saturday slush pile

I spent a lot of the day reading Kaleidotrope slush on my iPad, trying to get caught up on older submissions. I’ve actually been burnt a few times in the past couple of weeks on submissions that turned out to have been accepted elsewhere by the time I replied to accept them. I’m not a big fan of simultaneous submissions, and do in fact explicitly state in my guidelines that I won’t accept them, but I do understand why it’s a popular practice among writers. Writing a story takes considerable time and effort, so the natural impulse is to cast as wide a net with it as possible. Still, reading a story is not an insignificant investment of my time, especially when it’s a story that I like, that I might need to read more than once before accepting, and it’s very aggravating to learn that my investment was for naught. I do my level best to reply to all submissions within a three-month window, and I welcome queries from writers when I fail to reply in that time, but I realize that’s not enough of a guarantee for some people. I don’t necessarily hold it against writers when I find out their stories have been submitted elsewhere, but I also hope they realize that not every editor is going to be as forgiving. It depends on the venue, and their rate of response, but if they have a specific policy against simultaneous submissions, it might be best not to ignore that policy.

Beyond reading some stories — and accepting a few that I hope I’ll actually be able to accept — I watched a little television and played a little with the dog, a pretty typical Saturday. This evening, my parents and I went out to dinner to celebrate my father’s birthday, which is this coming Monday. We had a perfectly nice dinner at a local Italian place recently written up in the New York Times.

And that was my Saturday.

Herds of free-roaming local swine

Today wasn’t exactly like yesterday, but close enough that it raises questions about loops in the space-time continuum. Or maybe that’s just the Star Trek I watched this evening talking.

I spent a lot of the day thinking about Kaleidotrope, about maybe doing another three issues (instead of two) again next year, about maybe changing up how I split those issues across the twelve months to more evenly distribute them (something like January, May, and September), and about how doing four issues a year would probably kill (or at least bankrupt) me, even if right now it seems like maybe I have enough accepted material to fill all four. The sensible thing might just be to re-institute a reading period, a set time for when I’m open and closed to new submissions. The slush pile, while constant, is manageable, but I’m hesitant to accept new stories that I won’t be able to print for a year and a half or longer. (The next two issues, regardless of when they appear, are definitely full, with a third near-approaching.) Cutting off submissions for a little while — I’m thinking maybe July to October — could give me the breathing room I need.

Anyway, that’s what constitutes excitement this Thursday — unless you count the couple of taxis that came marginally close to hitting me this afternoon, and the drivers who gave me dirty looks for getting in the way of their illegal turns or running red lights. Heck, yesterday, a van rode up on the sidewalk just a few feet from me, when the driver got tired of waiting for the cars in front of him to make a left turn. Of course, things could be worse. According to my Forgotten English desk calendar, in the 1800s, New York City was rife with “herds of free-roaming local swine.” To wit:

“I had hoped to find on my return from Canada that this public nuisance, by means of papers and strictures of different authors, had been abated, but was disappointed on finding that it was as great as ever. The lawyers and judges dare not prosecute negligent herdsmen with existing laws and many people have conspired to transgress them. They, like gentlemen of other professions, are the creatures of the mob and have not the hardihood to offend it by rigorous adherence to their duty.”

So, no cholera-spreading pigs, which is always good. But also not much else. I’m glad, at least, that tomorrow’s Friday.

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day.

I spent mine mostly sitting in the backyard, reading stories for Kaleidotrope and enjoying what could be the last of the nice weather for a little while. It started to rain earlier this evening, and there are thunderstorms predicted for tomorrow. All weekend long, though, the weather was really beautiful, if a little hot, and I set up the umbrella and took my lunch out to the back deck. I didn’t finish doing the reading I wanted to do in the three or four hours I was out there — I took breaks, to play with the dog, help my mother with her recent iTunes purchases — but I’ve made some kind of dent in the slush pile, which is always good.

Otherwise, it was just a lazy end to a three-day weekend. My deepest thanks to the men and women who’ve given their lives (and who put their lives on the line every day, still) to give me the freedom to do that.