story publication

I recently received notification from the Editors at City Lit Journal, a short story and poetry magazine, that one of my submitted stories received a nod for publication pending several suggested edits.

I looked over the editor's edits and made the minor corrections they requested. They also mentioned that the "narrator's purpose is a bit too heavy handed" and thought the twist in the story could be "more subtle when the person on the bike is not telling the story." I read this several times before I realized that the editors wanted something that was less "punchy".

My story, about a bike accident, begins in 2nd person point of view before switching to first person for the story twist. That's my catch, my one-two punch, the "hinge". I'd rather not give away anymore of the story until it's actually published but I asked several people for their respected opinions on what could or could not be changed.

Thoughts about what to do swirled in my mind. I could change the 2nd person point of view to 3rd person, completely detaching the reader and narrator from the action (i.e. bike accident) before switching to 2nd person (i.e. driver reaction). Or start with 1st person (i.e. the narrator as the cyclist) and switching to 3rd person for the driver or remaining in 1st person, now as the driver. There's a number of ways I can change this but the impact in the 3rd half of the story won't carry as much weight if the narrator doesn't tell the reader that he/she is the driver and not the cyclist.

I want the story to send a message to the reader that you can be the cyclist but you can also be the driver who hit the cyclist. Victim vs. Perpetrator. Carefree vs. Impatient. It can go both ways.

I decided not to change the main story line nor the view points. Everyone has their opinions however subjective and I know I won't be able to please everyone. I've made a couple changes regarding the cyclist and left the rest as is.

We'll see what the editors have to say.

Denied?!?

Well, that was embarrassing. I overcharged my credit card and couldn't pay for my portion of dinner last night. When I called Chase to see what happened, Costco finally charged me for the bedroom set I purchased nearly three weeks ago that I have yet to receive. I went right over my credit limit and got slapped with an overdraft fee.

Today, I paid off my card in full and explained to Chase how I am one of their reliable and responsible customers and if they don't help me out, I'll jump ship. Done. Fee removed.

I do need to curb my plastic card spending habits. It's getting out of hand these days.

legistation for renting to owners w/ pets

It seems Animal Control and Welfare Commission is trying to pass measures requiring landlords to rent to responsible pet owners.

Currently the live release rate of pets in San Francisco animal shelters in 2008 is at 87%. That's very good considering that SF isn't exactly pet friendly.

I consider myself a responsible pet owner and I completely understand how difficult it is to find a rental apartment that allows dogs, let alone large breed ones. I agree that landlords should have the option to rent to people with pets based on how responsible the pet owner is. But it shouldn't be a legislated measure. Not everyone likes pets and some people are allergic to animals. A measure like this will only cause more grievances between landlords and renters.

why I hate Yahoo

Yahoo sucks. They used to be a great company that produced quality web services and now they just suck. Some of the idiotic things that Yahoo has done include:

1. Forced installation of a Yahoo browser bar if you install anything Yahoo related like their IM program. I don't want that stupid browser bar sitting right below my firefox navigator, taking up valuable screen space. How many useless search bars do I need?

2. Yahoo IM locks out constantly and every time a Yahoo developer fixes one IM issue, they send out annoying yahoo_admin update messages. So I switched to Trillian but the Yahoo IM plugin found it's way to harass me with their updates.

3. The draft autosave in Yahoo mail doesn't work. If you don't type your email and save As Draft or send it out within 10 minutes, you're logged off. Log back in and lo and behold, your message is gone! I've wasted so much time typing one email over and over again until I got fed up and started typing it in Word just so I could copy and paste it to yahoo. It's ridiculous and annoying.

Yahoo can't seem to get their shit together. Every mail program I know has an autosave program that works. I wish they would just copy the code off google, like everyone else and fix their mail program.

4. Yahoo's search algorithms find obscure and useless information I don't need. Did I say useless? Enough said.