Time flies, now it's May. Almost June. I did get about 25 submissions sent out in the last few months and just heard back about 5 poems being accepted by the Plutonian Shores anthology by Weird Wide Web. I got two new short stories and a few poems written in between work and distractions.
Thanks to the Thursday group that I was able to attend a few times last year, I ended up writing a few poems with David C. Kopaska-Merkel, and we got an acceptance on a piece called "interweave" to be published in the may 2027 issue of Scifaikuest.
On the unexpected side, Anne wanted us to go through the thousands of photos I have taken on our trips over the last few years, to print up the best photos to frame and put on the walls around her house. She finally got tired of the old generic art that was there. It was fun looking at those old memories, and I was a bit amazed to see the quality of the best images when printed on glossy paper at Staples, straight from the phone. I guess the phone effectively has 11x14 resolution, and they look crisp and gorgeous on the walls. So it's a reminder of yet another unbankable skill of mine. But a pleasure to dig them up and see them on display. Here is one from Lake Havasu City:
It made me wonder if I could get big prints (36x36" maybe?) f some of my best fractal art from the 90s and get them into one of the local art shows. They have a great variety of themes and rotating exhibits. But I can picture myself standing there defending against every idiot who's going to say, "It's AI, you're a lowlife cheater." It is NOT AI. There's a big difference between computer rendered (CG) art that might have taken hours to set up and just typing a prompt and having the work handed to you (AI). AI is fucking up everything.
So there are always these multiple talents fighting for my limited time. I should stick to written works. Even if I never write another pieces, I have over 1000 pieces which have never been published, and about 800 that could run again as reprints.
Other than that, I had a 60th birthday where I gave away some old books and zines. We enjoy giving things away. I'm okay with the reality that I will almost never make any money selling stuff in person. I far prefer sending works to existing publications, where the $5 or $10 or $50 per story or poem turns into pizza money and there is no in-person pressure. Not to mention almost never being "in person" with any actual person anymore.
My mind keeps spinning with ideas. Watching recent series like Foundation and the Expanse does make me want to write some much bigger sci-fi projects, but the insanity of begging for hits across every social site usually snuffs out that interest. The writing is still a talent, worth battling the empty page to pull images out of the ether, but what I don't need is a third or fourth job/gig. My whole life is prioritized by main job (most $$), stamp business (30+ years now, decent extra $$ per month), and creative projects are always going to be after those are done. I wish I could see some other way to go about it.
Most of my creative output is in my blogs. The gaming blog has passed 400 articles. The sum of them all show about 300,000 hits over the years. I can't have comments on, because then the site just gets inundated with assholes posting porn links and scams, and I'm expected to spend valuable hours every day deleting all the rubbish. It would be nice to hear from real people occasionally, but the spammers have broken the models.
I have those other submissions out there, and hope to have another update soon...
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