Eighteen

I finished and submitted my eighteenth story of the year earlier this evening, a 3,300-word erotic love story.

This story owes its existence to my attending Left Coast Crime. While there, I met and talked with an editor to whom I've previous sold work. He mentioned an anthology he had put together and that he was a few stories short of the word count his publisher wanted. I had not submitted to the anthology because I hadn't come up with a good idea in time to meet the original submission deadline.

I asked what he needed and might I have a shot at providing a story at this late date.

Upon his return home Monday, he sent me an email outlining the kinds of stories he didn't have and wanted to see.

That night, after I returned home, I wrote the opening couple of pages and a rough outline of a story. I emailed it to him and learned within the hour that he thought the idea was "terrific."

Although I was swamped with other deadlines (I edit a weekly newsletter, a monthly newsletter, a monthly newspaper, and a bi-monthly magazine--all of them with deadlines at the end of one month or beginning of the next), I wrote the story.

And now the manuscript's in the editor's hands. Let's hope the execution is as "terrific" as the concept...