Carey Burns

Turns out my "booboo finger" is actually broken and the nail is turning a lovely blackish hue.  I always have loved black... Even with a busted finger I've been trying to keep busy with reading and writing and submitting.  Black Corners of a Blood Red Room by Patrick Rutigliano is well worth the buy and I'll be working on a proper review to post on Amazon soon.  When I'm done with Autumn by David Moody I think I'll skip genres to true crime.  Too much horror makes Carey go something-something...  On the writing front, I sent a flash zombie piece to Pill Hill and it will appear in Daily Frights 2013 .  Now I need to submit just 9 more stories to different places to meet my 2012 goal.  Oh yeah! Lately I've been having more and more Halloween dreams and think my brain is telling me to start making goodies.  The ideas are there, I just can't make anything out of clay or paper pulp until this finger stops hurting.  Ah well.  A...

There is nothing like slamming a door on your own finger to make you appreciate the complex mind-hand connection.  It is like I'm learning to type all over again and it isn't pretty. So it turned out I submitted three stories to different publishers.  That means I'm only 9 away from my yearly goal.  Fancy!  I was going to write the ending to a couple stories tonight, but that was before the whole slamming of the finger, so that will wait until sometime in the future.  If you could see the typos I'm making here you would cringe.  Seriously! Slimming isn't going so well today, but I'm trying.  Somehow I'm pretty sure I may have gained a little weight over the weekend...just a hunch. Okay, gonna quit the blog now because it is taking longer to fix the typos than it is to type the blog.  Bah!

It looks like Rapid Decomposition (an e-anthology by Twisted Library Press) is coming to completion!  My two stories "Outbreak" and "Zombie 101" will appear in it and I'm dancing a jig that they will see the light of day.  Happy times! I've been going through all of my stories I've written and realized that my organizational skills aren't what you call "good."  That said, I have tomorrow off and part of the day I'll be culling extraneous copies of anything I've saved.  With any luck, I'll get it all done in a day...I hope! Tomorrow I will also be submitting a couple short stories.  They too became homeless when the anthologies were killed.  Here's hoping they find homes again!

Well, I did not die over the weekend, though it sure felt like it on Friday...  I'm now convinced I've been having gallbladder attacks and decided to take steps to ensure that they are fewer.  (aka cutting out that damned FAT from my diet)  Seems like everytime I had an attack was after eating something with fat in it (grilled cheese...fries...ice cream...pasta w/ olive oil and parm...) so I'm trying to cut as much fat from food as I can.  It actually coincides well with jumping back into The Slimming project. Last night I spent two hours working on a very old story that might just see print in the future.  It was neat to re-read it and try to weave in the editor's suggestions.  I think it totally works and am excited for him to read it.  Hopefully I will complete it tonight and send it his way. Another project has been weaseling its way into my head and I fear all other projects will be pushed aside until this little boy's story can be told. ...

For the last few weeks I've had a pain in my abdomen that at first I thought was my GERD acting up.  Well, this morning around 3am it woke me up, demanded my attention, and hasn't left me since.  This isn't GERD.  This is something else.  I fear it might be...gallstones!  I know WAY too many people who have had gallbladder issues and they keep saying that's what I've got.  So, do I wait until Monday to call my doctor and try to get an appointment or do I go to the ER?  Decisions, decisions...  My gut (haha) is telling me to go to the ER.  We'll see what tonight brings. In happier news, I'm perhaps nearly finished with "Forced Migration."  I can't quite tell because the caterpillars still don't know why they're headed where they're headed but they have (thankfully) arrived there.  They keep saying it is something big but in all honesty, everything is big to a caterpillar.

I had an epidural injection yesterday and am really feeling the pain today.  I'm hoping it eases up on me but I'm taking tomorrow off just to rest.  Good times! So I had sent out a query on Saturday and got a reply today...in the negative.  She was very kind and I'll keep plugging away and sending out queries and working on the novel until someone decides to snatch it up.  I think I may have to change it from a narrative to a third person.  Might have to re-do the first chapter too.  Good thing I gave myself a year! In other news, I'm going through all of my stories that got reverted back to me and trying to find fits in the current market.  I've been scanning Duotrope and lurking on small press pages but nothing is grabbing me just yet.   Something has to be out there.  Been working on a tale called "Forced Migration" that is just turning very weird.  I've got points of view of humans, wooly bear caterpillars, and ...

Days like today (everyday, really) I miss Arizona.  The grit beneath my feet...the mountains on the horizon...the veil of smog hanging over the Valley...I miss it all.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to be back close to my family and old friends.  I just wish I could sprout Snowbird wings and fly away to see my friends and soak up a little warmth back in Tempe.  Just for a while.  I finished the final revisions of my novel No Small Sacrifice today and my character lived in Arizona for a while so she made me miss it, I think.  Way to go, Molly! Anywho, now I need to buck up and write an epic query letter.  Wish me luck. I'm finally getting reviews posted for Benjamin Rogers' Faith and the Undead and Tony Schaab's The G.O.R.E. Score:  A Review Guide to All Things Zombie .  With any luck I'll finish reading Patrick Rutigliano's Black Corners of a Blood-Red Room either tonight or tomorrow and get a review up over the weekend.  Oh, and...