Poor Jacob. He’s had a lingering cough for a long time now. The other day he started getting sick again, so yesterday I took him to see the doc. Early stage of pneumonia. So, he’s on a lot of dope. Right now he’s not acting much better, but he was up at 4:30 a.m. and I know he’s just very tired. The cough is better, anyway. The doc said he should be back to normal in 48 hours, which would be tomorrow afternoon.

I got to stay home with him yesterday and today. Got some freelance work done, though not as much as I’d hoped. Still, the articles are worth more than a day of subbing.

Visited the P.O. box yesterday and found that “Little Graveyard on the Prairie” earned a quick, but personalized rejection from The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Good writing, but the story didn’t grab him. Well, okay.

Today I took copies of my books to Full Circle book store for my Dec. 16 signing (at 3 p.m.). I’m still not thrilled about the fact I have to provide the books for it. I hope it pays off.

I’m quite disillusioned with the Amazon Shorts program. Apparently it doesn’t take much of anything to stay at the top of the best seller list in that program. The threshold for a payout was lowered from $25 to $10. “One Night in Benevolence” has consistently been in the top 20 horror stories, but hasn’t had the 50 or so downloads needed to earn me $10 in royalties. So, in other words, nobody is really reading the stories. Any of the stories, based on what I’ve come to believe after hearing from other writers.

No news from Scrybe Press. I still need books for the Full Circle signing. I’d still like to be paid. I’d like to see Seven Days in Benevolence in print. I’d like to believe I won’t be bitching about Ulrik not being published two years from now. I’d like to believe …

No word from those other two publishers looking at Amara’s Prayer and The Prometheus Syndrome, either.

Writers. We’re just a bunch of masochists.