I had every intention of going to Scares That Care this past weekend and finally meet up with colleagues I hadn’t seen in two years or had only ever exchanged emails/contracts with, but things did not work out and I’m partly jealous to have missed out–particularly at Jonathan Janz, who apparently photographed every inch of that convention and has been posting them in social media (he’s a right bastard).  Anyhoo…

So, first thing:

As of now, I’m fully in Maybe and This-Is-Interesting-Maybe mode when it comes to the Lamplight submissions.  This means that, if you subbed between July 1st and July 15th, when the cut-off for the September issue was, you are in my This-Is-Interesting-Maybe pile.  You got past the first page with me, so I downloaded and will peruse more closely.

If you subbed before July 1st and haven’t heard from me–congrats!  You’re in the Maybe pile.  It’s kinda like the semi-finals.

What this means: I’ll be making decisions in the next week and a half.  The first will be the TIIM submissions.  I’ll winnow those down, then move on to the Maybes.

I’ll be honest, this is hard.  As hard as any other anthology.  The amount of submissions for this one issue–and only for four spots!–and the quality of the submissions is making this ridiculous.  Most editors–even us lowly guest editors–say this, but that doesn’t take away the truth.  Here are some quick numbers.  Based on the number of submissions, and the number of spots, my acceptance percentage is going to be less than half a percent.

So, submitters…

As for the second thing:

This is Lucy Batgirl Anderson.  She’s a shelter dog, dumped six days ago and adopted by my family two days.  Going to the Humane Society–to check out another dog that, it turned out, really hates cats (and, well, we have two of those)–my daughter, the bug, started singing to Lucy through the kennel.  So, there’s that.

She’s already stolen my pillow and my side of the bed.

Cheers.