In the mail:

“The Name of the Feather” went to Ellery Queen on Tuesday the seventh. Am I happy with it? Hmmm…more happy than I was when I finished the first draft. But it’s

the trickiest thing I’ve written so far–and perhaps the best–I’m worried. And I’m not sure if Ellery Queen is the right market any more. I used to read it regularly years ago, and they’d stick in the occaisional story like this. I remember one in particular about a maze consisting of a series of seven rooms, one right after another — wonderful stuff.

Reading the current isssue, I wonder what happened. Straight mysteries, it looks like. Hmm. I wonder if they’ll ream me a new one, or just politely fluff me off: “We’re a mystery magazine, madame; we don’t play your little games here.”

Heh.

“One Cool Million” is still sitting on my desk. I need to decide whether I want to send it off again or revise it. I was going to revise it…but I’m working on Beauregard now, and I have about as much interest in revising OCM as I do learning how to play the bagpipes. Wouldn’t it be nice to learn how to play the bagpipes? Sure, babe. Sure.

I wonder what’s going to happen to that damn story.

Beauregard is going…uh, well. I never get too much of it done at any one sitting, and half the time I unweave all the lies I told the last time I wrote and rewrite it again. Beauregard isn’t in a hurry, apparently. The writing of the story itself matches the personality of the main character, slow and terse. And yet the page count rises. Well, second draft is the time for rational thought, eh?