Some interesting results from a survey of SF/F authors about advances: [link]

Also some interesting feedback comments.

Interesting stuff. Similar info for romance: [link]

Okay. I'm sorry, guys. Sometimes I worry that in my journal I freak too much, that I'm bringing you down. Because of that and because I just can't handle it, I didn't talk about this episode when it happened a few weeks ago. But it's in there, it's gotta get out. It's just the dirt that's already there.

So I'm going to post the drabble, and I'll whitefont it in case you want to skim. Upsetting child story. But that's one of the things the drabbles are for, for me. So.

Oh, and it's closer to 200 words than 100, but I just gotta get it out. I shredded the first version, and it probably said better what I feel. Anyway.

The Difference A Year Makes

Our big white van pulled up outside your house and you, with your brother and sister, came running before we even honked the horn. Hair flying, precious folder of piano music tucked under your arm, you were chattering before you hit the seat.

(Your parents went on another drug binge and locked you out of the house. You wandered around the neighborhood for hours in the freezing cold, trying to protect the baby, shepherding your terrified younger siblings.)

The last time I saw you, you came bounding to hug me. You told me you'd been practicing, and could I bring you another copy of "America, the Beautiful."

(You were living with your grandmother then, hopeful, but it wasn't the first or the last time you'd been shuffled in and out of state custody.)

I didn't have to ask why when they told me. When did you learn to tie a rope into a noose? It must have been somewhere between twelve and thirteen. Your little sister, she'll learn sooner because she walked in on your second attempt.

(Now you're in a mental institution somewhere, and all I can think is, it's got to be better than this.)

::short descending whistle::

Ouch. Vivid. I hope getting it out helps.

Oh, Liese. That's horrible.

Ouch. I'm still glad I read it though.

Oh, Liese.

Crikey. Liese, damn.

Oh my Liese.

Also, what you do is so important. You contribute joy to people's lives. Thank you.

Sail, that was very clever. Love it.

Deb, I especially like the Bryan Adams drabble -- it reads like lyrics to me. Liese, that was tough, but gorgeous. So raw and honest.

Here's my last-minute entry. A hundred words exactly, but it could be so much longer...

Challenge #53: One Year

It was going to be an adventure, we told four-year-old Jake. It was going to be all right, we told the cat, doped and swaying in his cage in the backseat. We told each other it wouldn’t have to be forever.

We left behind the traffic-choked highways and cheek-by-jowl neighborhoods of New Jersey for a whistle-stop town in northern Wyoming, and a house nestled against the county fairgrounds. The heavy scent of sugar beets hung in the air; gun racks took a place of honor in every truck. We were outsiders, not above suspicion.

We lasted there just one year.