Witty WIP?

The galley text for the Dead Men anthology has just arrived - time for me to put on my special nitpicking reading glasses and go looking for mistakes. It's so exciting!

The editors also sent a gentle reminder that they need the promotional author interviews in by next week - time for me to stop faffing around with "clever" suggestions on the best ways to kill zombies and just send off my answers.

It's also time for me to ease back into working on some of my more serious WIPs. However, at the moment, and I'm not sure why, I'm a mite obsessed (a phrase en par with being 'a little bit pregnant') with getting into this humour anthology. It's paying professional rates and has already received over 700 submissions, so there's hardly any competition, but hey, I'm happy to indulge, for a reasonable amount of time, any mania that gets me madly editing and polishing, creating new stories and wildly subbing. My first two attempts at this antho were rejected within hours, but I've just experienced the triumph of my third submission actually making it past the first stage firewall and being considered by the antho's editorial board (I'm calling them the 'Council of Five', and I picture them seated at a high table wearing inquisitorial robes as they interrogate each trembling story brought before them ). The story that made it that far was actually the brand new story I crowed about finishing a few days back, which wasn't too bad a result for its first time out. Alas, in the end, my exceedingly humorous, Hemmingwayesque story set in a French restaurant in 2029 did not get enough 'yes' votes to make it into the final round, but I did get an invite to submit another story. So where before I was dubious about my ability to tickle the funny bones of this antho's editors, but was nonetheless driven to try, I've now caught a whiff of  'maybe I can do it', and am rallying for one last, mighty attempt before the deadline hits at the end of the month. You see, I had this hilarious idea on the train on the way to Arvo Job on Tuesday that would be perfect...

So, once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, with my piece about a futuristic travelling salesman. Ba-boom!