STATUS: Monday, August 1st

The Daily Report

Well, it’s now August! Hugo voting ended yesterday. Jack and I were a bit late to the party with WorldCon memberships, so vetting the nominees and deciding how we would each vote took up time and energy right up to the deadline. That’s why we haven’t done much more than some initial slush-sorting for Ligature Works submissions, barring one “sorry, can’t take” and one “gotta have”. Now that we’re past that, though we’ll start responding to submissions in earnest.

This early in the window, there’s going to be more rejections going out than acceptances. That’s just the process. We have received in excess of 70 submissions so far. There are ones that are just wrong for us, then above that there are ones that are not the best of what we’ve received, and those one aren’t going to improve no matter how many more pieces we read, but even the ones that grab us might not prove to be the best by the end of the window.

Speaking of windows’ ends: the gender neutral writing challenge ended today. I kept meaning to put up more reminders so people who were working on stories over the longer term would know, but there was a lot of stuff going on and I didn’t have a lot of energy or focus. I received a request over the social mediums for a deadline extension, but that doesn’t really seem fair to the participants of the first gender-free challenge. Yes, I’m already planning the second one. It will be less off-the-cuff and cover a much longer period. Like 2017.

I figure if I make it a floating annual thing, that will make it easier for traditionally published stories to be considered, since they won’t have to try to hit a narrow target in terms of when they come out.

Financial Status

Well. It’s the first of the month. Payday! WorldCon 74 in Kansas City is likely to strain the budget a bit. I do have a nice little nest egg for it, but I suspect food and other miscellaneous expenses will run us up quite a bit.

The State of the Me

I’ve been so tired. Taking more rest has helped. I have a plan, a serious plan, for next July and August to be mostly a hiatus. It’s something I think of every summer when the hot months roll around and I remember how bad it is, but I’m not much on long-term planning so I don’t think of it until it’s too late, but I am currently mapping things out about a year in advance so it might work out well. Right now if I just declared summer break at the start of all my big plans, it’d all come crashing down. Next summer I should be well situated to take a couple of months of reflection after the end of my planned awesome year of awesome.

In the meantime, I guess I just have to step lightly from task to task and not take on too much at once.

Plans For Today

Well, where to start? I’m going to be meeting with my submissions editor (i.e., Jack) as we nail down howour routine for sorting, evaluating, and replying to Ligature Works submissions will work in practice. There’s also some writing to do.