So far, my newfound urge to write (brought home from Seattle, where the Writers of the Future workshop caused it) is paying off. It may not be the greatest story I’ve written – actually, it is probably the worst – but my entry for the Halloween contest of my Codex Writers Group is finished and submitted. We’ll see what it does in the contest; it might conceivably be a good story for Andromeda Spaceways.

At least now my desk is cleared for work on three other unfinisheds: Relativity, the second story in the series of silly two-astronauts-in-a-spaceship stories that started with Beans and marbles; my haunted-park story The park, at sunset; and Diamond sharks, the whale tale that got first-drafted at the Writers of the Future workshop.

And when those are finished (and submitted!), it’s finally time to break ground on the novel-length sequel to Conversation with a mechanical horse. Actually, the thought of starting a novel terrifies me. But thankfully, the thought of not starting a novel terrifies me more. And my roommate extraordinaire M.T. Reiten resolved the issue for me of which novel to write first: the one that would bother me the most if it remained unwritten. Thanks, Matt!