Yesterday, I re-read ‘Prisoner of war’, the story I wrote for Cat Sparks‘ Agog! Ripping Reads anthology, and discovered to my delight that it’s actually a hell of a lot better than I thought when I finished it. (My girlfriend, though admittedly not the harshest of critiquers, is even asking for a novelization.) So today I did some revising, proofreading and inline editing, and went on an online search for a suitable market. (Starting, of course, with the SFWA qualifying markets; I really want to bag that oh so elusive third pro sale that will qualify me for Active membership.) So now, with a query letter to the editors at ‘Dark Wisdom‘ on its way, the unprecedented three open submissions I mention in an earlier post are now arguable four:

• ‘Queen of Diamonds’ has been lurking at the Intergalactic Medicine Show (Orson Scott Card’s online mag) for over four months now; my query mail has had ten days at their desk.
• ‘Oenocide’ has been rejected by Gastronomicon II (though technically, it wasn’t rejected, but the anthology cancelled) and is now waiting its turn at the Andromeda Spaceways virtual offices.
• ‘Diamond Sharks’ should be with Gordon Van Gelder, or at least John J. Adams, at Fantasy & Science Fiction by now.
• And though ‘Prisoner of war’ is not itself with the Dark Wisdom editors, a query letter is (they have an upper limit of 5,000 words, and advice their authors to query first for longer work (like POW is at 6,200).