I skipped all the way to the end to tell you all about a short story contest being run by Simon and Schuster. You can only have been published up to twice before, and the story theme is "downtown girls"... seems a chicklit type of thing, 7,500 words or fewer.

[link]

Photo Two The bench is so hard, as cold as a tombstone.

Maritzka chirps at me like a baby bird. Every time she opens her mouth, she wants me to fill it—not with the crackers Mama brought, but with myself. Maritzka would swallow me whole if she could, hungry little wren. The boys are noisier, and their laughter shreds the peaceful afternoon into rags. Too many fingers, too many feet. Too loud. Too loud.

Mama is hopeful—she tugs at my sleeve like a child herself. For reassurance? Am I real? Soon, she says, I will come home to my children.

That hair salon story might fit in there, Deena. But I rarely see anything involving stories where I don't say "I think I have something for that," and history has not borne this out, so far. It does happen downtown, though, to women...but they aren't really Carrie Bradshaw-sassy women. They both struggle terribly, but yet still remain alive in the end. Both of those things may be against chick-lit bylaws.

Thanks, Deb. I bookmarked that so I can go back and get the names right.

Deena, thanks for the link! Scarey thought, 7500 words isn't that long. It's only 75 drabbles, right?

Next drabble entry: Photo #9.

She picks up the photo by its edges, gently. It hadn’t held its color very well; early color photos didn’t. That wasn’t really important, you could still see the details that mattered to her: the prickly ruffles of the tutu, the soft black ballet shoes and her hair pulled up off her neck. Reality was nothing like her imagining, even then. Then, she could float and twirl, plie and jete across the stage. Applause, the crowd--her parents--go wild!

Now, she sets the photo down as she turns the wheels on her chair to roll it into the kitchen.

Happy Birthday AmyLiz!

Happy birthday, AmyLiz. Deb, I can't find the formatted version of that story,. with my address on it and stuff, and it seems that the contest people want a footer and page numbers too...scary how little I know about Word after all this time. It really is embarrassing...I'd get a book but I'd need something that breaks stuff down as simply as humanly possible.

Amy! BIRTHDAY!

Sail, wow. That one was kickass.

erika, I still suck at Word; I was a WordPerfect girl and I still find Word clunky, cumbersome and opaque. Do you need it formatted?

Thanks for the birthday wishes, all!

Yeah, let me check what they want again...I've got till July but I tend to talk myself out of these things if I don't pretend to do them impulsively...I wonder what I did with the nice one I had.(I have a real problem with seeing my work as having a future, though...in fact I'm fighting the urge to type work like "work" right now, and it's NFG.) This one is nice because you don't have to pay...if I have an urge to throw away $10, there are plenty of other places to do it than fricking Glimmer Train. Thanks. Good luck with the editor, Deb.

Ed Gein: Everyone: What should I put in my cover letter? If they like it, it would be my first published fiction. My non-fiction is kind of relevant to this piece, though(It's the haircut one from the contest I lost.) Yeah, it's Short Story Bagged Salad.