\nTwo items of good news:\n<\/p>\n
\nFirst… it looks like I’ve finally<\/em> isolated the problem that was causing \nWhy Mom<\/a>, of course.\n<\/p>\n \n“Honey,” she said the other day, after I subjected her to my latest sad-sack tale \nFrom the mouths of medical writers…\n<\/p>\n \nSo it’s the sound card. Pull the sound card out, and everything is super. Put the \nSecond… I’ve signed a lease on a new place. My philosophy is, if I’m living by \nEventually I found a studio and an apartment that were cheap and<\/em> clean. \nAs for writing: I’m dropping the thud-and-blunder novel for now. I guess I’ll
\npoor Spenser to freeze up. After three months of despair and false hopes, it looks
\nlike there’s light at the end of the tunnel.
\nAnd who is the computer genius that deserves the credit for showing me the way?\n<\/p>\n
\nof scouring message boards and downloading random drivers and why-oh-why didn’t
\nI just buy a Mac, “why don’t you try dealing with the problem systematically?”
\nUninstall as much stuff as you can and see if your computer works. If it does,
\nstart adding things back one-at-a-time until the problem re-appears.”\n<\/p>\n
\nsound card back in, and there is the freezing (and the moaning and the kvetching
\nand the tearing-out-of-the-hair and the oy gevalt…) There are a couple of reasons
\nwhy this could happen, and a number of things I can do to fix this. But that can
\ncome later<\/em>. Right now, I’m just basking in the knowledge that I can
\nwrite this without the fear that at any second, I’ll have to do a hard reboot.\n<\/p>\n
\nmyself, I should pick a small, cheap place and try to save money.
\nAs long as the apartment complex doesn’t have a green pool
\nthat’s filled with rotting leaves. I just see that as a Bad Sign for some reason. If
\nthat makes me effete, a yuppie suburban boy, so be it.\n<\/p>\n
\nI almost went with the studio, until I realized how absolutely flat-out stupid
\nthat would have been. The one thing about the studio was that the name of the
\nbuilding was “Melrose Place”. I think that was what was clouding my judgment.
\nOr it could have been the 20% savings in rent. Hard to say.\n<\/p>\n
\nstick with the short SF fiction to try and stay sharp. The
\n“Why I Hate Aliens<\/a>”
\ntheme is pretty fruitful, actually. (Although it’s apparently not as straightforward
\nas it sounds… M’ris<\/a> informs me that
\nabout 30% of the submissions don’t have the requisite hatred of extraterrestrials,
\nand about 12% don’t have any extraterrestrials at all.)
\nAnyway, I hope to have a couple more drafts in the next few
\ndays — not for the anthology, of course. But for what, then? Well, last Friday
\ncousin Michael<\/a>
\ntold me I should submit to Strange Horizons<\/a>.
\nSounds good to me. And if they say no… well, this site needs a Fiction
\ndirectory<\/a>, doesn’t it?\n<\/p>\n