That's the thing: there is no down side to sending to an agent as requested. If you want it published, it's the first step; if you're OK with just getting useful feedback, even a rejection can be useful in helping you make it better.

So long as you don't steam into it thinking ha! I am the Best and the Brightest and there will be a Bidding War!, you can't lose.

I am the Best and the Brightest and there will be a Bidding War!

Okay. So that thought also crossed my mind. It's a fun thought, like dreaming of what I'll do with the 10 million I win in the lottery every week, despite the fact that I don't play.

Oh, don't get me wrong; it crosses all our minds.

Just pointing out the essential difference between "wouldn't that be cool?" and "this is what I expect to happen and will be stunned and furious if it doesn't."

I too confess to the bidding war fantasy. I think it's OK as long as I realize it's only slightly more likely than my winning the million dollar prize a local radio station offers if a Mariner hits a homer into a specific tiny spot on their sign high above the left field wall.

(And I say "slightly more likely" only because bidding wars actually do happen once in a blue moon, and as someone who knows where homers in Safeco Field actually tend to go out, I'm impressed with how well KOMO did at making up a neat-sounding prize they'll never have to pay up on.)

Dudes and dudettes, is anybody familiar with the short-story market? I have a short-short I'm interested in submitting, and so far I'm using Google to do market research.

[link]

I note that many markets have reading periods that end in the spring. Are there any from this list that y'all recognize or have experience with? I recognize most of the magazines in "You're In The Money" and "Genre Gems", but that's all.

Beginnings Publishing: A Magazine for Novice Writers

Mindprints: A Literary Journal
Outsider Ink (outsiderink.com),
Prose Ax: doses of prose, poetry, visual and audio art (www.proseax.com),
The Unknown Writer (www.munno.net/unknownwriter),
Internet Envy

Alternate Realities Webzine (www.alternaterealitieszine.com),
Big Country Peacock Chronicle (www.peacockchronicle.com),
The Blue Moon Review (www.thebluemoon.com),
The Cafe Irreal: International Imagination (www.cafeirreal.com),
PIF (www.pifmagazine.com),

Genre Gems

Analog: Science Fiction and Fact (www.analogsf.com),
Asimov's Science Fiction (www.asimovs.com),
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (www.sfsite.com/fsf),
Millennium Science Fiction & Fantasy (www.jopoppub.com),
Scifi.com (www.scifi.com/scifiction),

Fame Without Fortune

Connecticut Review (www.ctstateu.edu/univrel/ctreview/index.htm),
The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing (www.webdelsol.com/tlr),
Snake Nation Review (www.snakenationpress.org),
StoryQuarterly (www.storyquarterly.com),
Transition: An International Review,

You're in the Money

The Georgia Review (www.uga.edu/~garev),
Glimmer Train Stories (www.glimmertrain.com),
Ploughshares (www.pshares.org),
The Southern Review (www.lsu.edu/thesouthernreview),
Tin House (www.tinhouse.com),

Around the World

The Barcelona Review (www.barcelonareview.com),
Event (event.douglas.bc.ca),
Grain Magazine (www.grainmagazine.ca),
Prism International (prism.arts.ubc.ca), Storie, all write (www.storie.it),

I remember reading that some heavyweights got started in both Ploughshares and GT(But GT wouldn't publish me so all their taste is in their mouths, of course.;))

Depends on the short story you want to place, Betsy. Anything wrong with, say Womens World? They buy short fiction, and pay for it, too.

Guys, for reasons having nothing at all to do with GWW and everything to do with an outside reality, I'm going to delete anything identifiable or specific to my first Nicholas, both here and elsewhere. Not destroying it - just making it inaccessible to the greater outside world.

I'm still going to drabble (since it's saving my sanity this past year), but I'll be putting them into a specifically screened livejournal folder. If you want to read any new work about those years, and have a livejournal account, ping me in LJ; if you don't and want to read them, ping me in email.

Sorry about this, but there's a bio in the works and I've discovered that I really do want to maintain a complete lack of visibility.

And sorry for being so oblique.

Allyson, WOOT! Go you!

Wow, what a catchup! Good vibes for Allyson (because I can't wait to buy this book), and for Deb (because... well, just because!)

(It still feels weird to try to talk to people, because I've lurked for so long, and though it seems like we all know each other, we still really don't. Well, you don't know me, at any rate.)

OK, less blabbling, more drabbling...

Picture 5

He built the light at Cape Kumukahi, and she fell in love. He was exotic and warm, and she married him after two weeks. He followed where the work led, and she sailed from tiny Pahoa into their future.

There were ten houses, three children, and 25 years. Good times and bad, they were home wherever they were. A party, cake and hothouse flowers for their anniversary, snapshots of a life well lived.

She returned to Pahoa, after he died. She lived on the coast, and his ashes joined the sea. She was his life, and he was her home.

That's beautiful, Ailleann.