I’ve been keeping up with my goal of at least 500 words or 1 hour of editing per day, but the last time I wrote a word of new draft prose was about a month ago. Since then it’s been all editing, outlines, notes, and proposals.

The good news is that in the last month or so I completed edits on three or four stories and sent them off to market for the first time. I also resubmitted some stories that had been languishing after being rejected, plus sent in some reprints to audio markets… all in all, I’ve more than doubled my number of stories in submission from the first of the year. More submissions will, I hope, lead to more sales. Also, now I can say that the proposals I wrote were for Wild Cards characters and stories, and that some of them were accepted (more news on that front when I can share it).

The bad news is that I haven’t sold a spec story since August. I’ve had seven acceptances since then, but four of those were audio reprints and the other three were sales to markets where I’d been invited. It’s nice to get an invite, or to sell a reprint, but a sale of a new story to a magazine or open anthology is more of a triumph. However, the recent increase in submissions has led to an increase in rejections, which does at least feel more like progress than the period from November to February during which I received no responses at all. It doesn’t help that I’ve had three stories out for over 200 days (the longest has been out for almost 400 days), which is a long time to wait for a response on a short fiction submission. None of these markets have responded to the e-queries I sent in mid-February, but for a variety of reasons I’m not ready to give up on any of them yet.

However, one of the audio reprint sales was “Babel Probe” at Drabblecast, which is a truly amazing performance of the story, and another one (just last week) was “Charlie the Purple Giraffe,” also to Drabblecast, which I am really looking forward to hearing.

I’ve also received my author copy of Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, which has a gorgeous cover and includes my Nebula nominee “Titanium Mike Saves the Day” (illustrated below by thepussinboots).

So, all in all, a pretty good writing month. Tomorrow I expect to begin work on an entirely new story… though I haven’t yet decided which one, and the first few days at least will still be notes and outline. I’m looking forward to drafting again!