…I have two new stories, "Answering Machine" and "One Out of Two" up at In Between Altered States and Necessary Fiction respectively. Both are also here under "Words in Print"

…I got Mel Bosworth's novel, "Grease Stains, Kismet and Maternal Wisdom" in the mail and have started reading. It's pretty adorable. You should read it as well.

…A friend sent me a link about November being "Write a novel in a month, month." I think I'll give that a go. I've been stalling on my next book. I have the outline more or less done and even the first few pages. That's the problem with short fiction and poetry--it pulls you (me) away from larger, longer work that requires faith, persistence and massive trains of will power. The short stuff is so easy-- effortless almost at times-- and fun. I've even had this writing disease lately where any slightly interesting image or word or phrase will trigger a story or poem. That happened last night and I wrote, I don't know, 10 poems and five flash stories. I finally had to make myself go to bed. I suppose there are a lot worse problems.

…Here are some Social Networking Rules for Men, from Esquire magazine, one of my favorites. (These are in random order, and I just picked the ones I liked, but read till the end because they're pretty witty/funny.)
-- Rule # 687 -- Unsubscribe every time.
-- Rule # 688 -- In descending order of appropriateness at the bar: playing with your phone, playing with yourself, playing with your iPad.
-- Rule # 689 -- You might have tweeted your condolences, but you still need to send flowers.
-- Rule # 690 -- People who know what you did: God, Santa, the guy at the Genius Bar.
-- Rule # 692 -- The man who types "LOL" in an email is half a man.
-- Rule # 694 -- No one has ever rolled on the floor laughing before typing "ROTFL."
-- Rule # 695 -- The satisfaction of finishing "War and Peace" is diminished by 20 percent when read on a Kindle.
-- Rule # 696 -- Email greetings in order of gravity for message: Attention!, Greetings, Hello, Hi, Yoyoyo check it.
-- Rule # 702 -- The serious email that you spent ten minutes composing and proofreading will have one glaring grammatical error that will undercut your point.
-- Rule # 703 -- And that error will be your instead of you're.
-- Rule # 706 -- Everyone is 30 percent more attractive in their online profile picture than they are in real life.
-- Rule # 707 -- 50% more attractive if it's a black-and-white picture.
-- Rule # 708 -- 70% more attractive if it's a black-and-white photo and half their face is in shadow.
-- Rule # 709 -- And if that shadow is being created by a kitten they're holding, forget it.