A thrilling week: three broken things, four story collections, 350 miles and a submissions deadline
Some of the thrills were great, some…less so.
The last week of submissions for Cunning Linguists saw an outpouring of some fantastic smut. My co-editors and I are still reading through it. If you submitted, you SHOULD have received a “Thank you, we received it!” kind of response from us. If you didn’t, please query. The only exception is the authors who received extensions and delivered their stories yesterday, September 10 — I still need to send y’all some safe response confirmations.
Labor Day weekend was also my late submissive’s birthday. I marked the date by driving down to the beach where we scattered his ashes–a beautiful place, although the walking trail I took to get there was formidable. Loose, dry mountains of sand: beautiful to look at, difficult to walk on.
I had dinner with his family while I was close by, and then drove home. 350 miles total that day. For the last 70 miles, my dear Corolla was making a very concerning sound whenever I pressed the gas.
Luckily, it turned out to be a muffler issue. I say “luckily” because it wasn’t a life-threatening engine issue, and I got home safely. Also my catalytic converter was *not* stolen although a number of people, when I told them what was happening, said “Oh no, it sounds like your catalytic converter might have been stolen.” It would just have been a rotten moment for human nature if somebody stole from my car during my beautiful grief trip.
It’s fixed now, but it was a very expensive fix.
The Muse works in mysterious ways, because that expensive fix has finally given me the motivation I needed to set up some pre-orders for a few different short story & flash collections I have intended to release for ages:
A collection of assorted literary erotica
An erotic Halloween collection
Also, unrelated to car repair financing–because it’s not a money-making venture–but still something I’ve looked forward to doing: my submissive’s flash fiction is available as a pay-what-you-want collection on Smashwords and in my Gumroad store. All royalties earned will be donated to Trans Lifeline, a charity my sub supported.
All of these are pre-orders for now as I format the interiors, but I’m excited for when they come out!
I’ll do more detailed posts on them as they appear for pre-order elsewhere, like on Amazon.
Car repairs aside, this week’s misadventures mean I also need to buy a new Nook (it’s too old to be viable to repair; but I need one to do my proofreading work). And, despite saying around Wednesday, “I hope everything else holds together, including my own body,” I threw my jaw out of joint eating chips and salsa, but that seems to have repaired itself. I’m sticking to a softer diet for the meantime.
That should be the three instances my mom things says these always come in.
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