Another day done. Now I'll gather raw materials for the comicon pieces I am making.

Just submitted CHEMO: The Town of Golden Woods for a fiction contest. Wish me luck.

Running errands with my mom, wondering if my puppy will be devoured by their much larger dog. Probably not.

Just closed the refinance that wouldn't die. Feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Writing and watching the Office.

Spending the day with my wife. Crepes with friends. Teaching dog to walk and drop deuces outside. Peruvian food later? Perfect sunday

Chemotherapy: The Town of Golden Woods

Here is my draft intro to my story submission for Dunesteef.com 's broken mirror story event. The idea is everyone writes a story with the same premise: "Someone arrives in town and discovers everyone is the same." The characters/setting is based on the larger novel project I am working on.

If this is something you'd be interested in reading drop me a line and I will email you. As ever, I am always looking for feedback. I will be writing and rewriting this piece until the April 30th deadline.

Chemotherapy: The Town of Golden Woods

By J. M. Perkins

I looked and saw the beasts of the field: the submen and overmen, the monsters and parasites. I watched them growing, breeding undying like a thousand cancers over the body of mankind. And I cried out, who who can kill these cancers before the body dies?

Book of Chemo: ch: 29 v: 14

I sat listening to the whirl of the turbine. I tried not to eye Burke, who was busy pretending not to know me. He sat in the aisle across from me, idly flipping through some Men’s magazine. I tried real not to think about how many ways this could go wrong. Because if it went wrong, Burke over there was going to kill me. I sighed. Sometimes I missed the straightforwardness of zombies.

Of course, if I screwed up clearing an infestation of the undead, Burke would kill me just the same. It's just that you know what to expect when dropping in on a mindless horde. Blind drops were the worst. They either bored you half to death, or showed you a dozen new ways you can be killed or worse.

I hate blind drops.

---

This is a test of the blog posting service of ping.fm. It's nifty!

#twitter test 2

test

Rejections: The Update!

Since the last time I've been published (December 08) I've had seven rejections. By my 'focus on fifty rejections' philosophy that means I have 43 more to go before I should start wondering when I'll be published. Thankfully, the majority of polite 'no thanks' I get nowadays aren't just form correspondence, which is an incredible relief let me tell you. Probably the story I am most frustrated with is 'I am Moloch' which nearly always gets interesting and encouraging feedback but it just... doesn't... quite... work for the editor. I feel it is so close to being something great, but almost doesn't count. Ironically, the critique I get on the story often contradicts earlier advice. Oh well, can't say I blame any of the editors. Moloch is deeply weird and tries to be a meta-story and frankly I just might not have the skill to pull off what I envision (but I would never put that in a form letter mind you). I am curious about one thing; how many times should I allow a piece to be rejected before I retire it? Despite my fondness for it, 'Underneath' in particular has had more then its share of form letters. We'll see. There is still some more publications it might fit with, and I can always check Ralan's to see there are some more it might fit with. To try and encourage myself to do more submissions here's the list of Stories I am working on getting published: Dr. Genocide and the Five Stages of Grief Ignoring the Tag Storms A Bottle of Absolut Fractal Blooms of Differentiation Code Adam Underneath I am Moloch Dang, when I type them all out I realize that I just need to write more stories. I always try to reread/put a new coat of proofreading varnish on the pieces whenever they get returned (and sometimes discover embarrassing errors, sorry slush readers). I have half a dozen other semi done projects that need to be polished or abandoned maybe. Plus, I should probably try to get my published work republished somewhere; I've been hitting up my favorite podcasts but should probably investigate some anthologies/contests. Well that's all I've got for now, I'll tell you more when I got more. And when I finally conquer of the world of short fiction, I will try to extend my empire with my embryonic novel projects that make me scream and cuss and cry more than any short fiction ever could (I think my novel Mortal Song is currently on its fourth draft... ugg. My most sincere apologies to anyone I subjected to an earlier draft of the thrice cursed book).