2/6 means I’m a third of the way there.

Because fractions. We can reduce them, precious.

Completed my second of six stories today, since I did quite a bit of sitting around on an airplane and then later in the airport while I waited for the bus to arrive. This one’s a bit silly, and came out to a little over 7700 words. I have a potential market in mind for it, but if I want even a short I’ll have to cut nearly 4000 words from it.

Which isn’t as horrifying as it sounds, since the middle of that story is kind of a hot mess where I spun my wheels and tried to figure out what I was doing. So I have hope for editing it into a much tighter storyline, but we’ll see. Either way, it now goes into the depths of my hard drive to marinate until I have time to do editing – which will be after the write-a-thon is done.

Also, the title on this one is absolutely terrible too. Some day I will be good at this.

Significant Figures Excerpt:

That morning, at great personal risk, Stephen’s waffle iron attempted to tell him something very important.

This was not a normal course events in most households, and not merely because bachelors aren’t really known for their possession of specialized kitchen gadgetry. No, Stephen Charlemagne Robins had standards and was not going to limit himself to a single frying pan coated with a black veneer of old fry-ups, no matter how many of his former housemates had claimed such a thing really provided both character and flavor.

Rather, Stephen’s kitchen gadgets, of which he owned an impressive array, all carefully chosen at the local department store after exhaustive research on Consumer Reports, were simply more sentient than any normal electronic device had any right to be. This was an act of pure self-defense on their part. Only the waffle iron and the blender were old enough to recall the horrifying day when the espresso machine, upon beeping at an inopportune time, had been redefined into greasy slag that smelled faintly of French roast. Thereafter they made certain to impress upon all new devices entering Stephen’s well-appointed high-rise apartment that there were things one did, and things one didn’t do, and it was important to pay strict attention to the difference between the two when Stephen hadn’t yet had his second cup of coffee.

And if you don’t mind indulging me, I’d also like to toot my own horn a little in a non-write-a-thon related way – I just had a story published in Strange Horizons this week! It is both the shortest and best story I’ve written to date. So if you have a moment, please head over and give it a read: Comes the Huntsman. I hope that you enjoy it! (And if you do, please tell your friends!)