As I suggested nearly two years ago in my very first blog post, I write primarily for myself. This remains true but so does the fact that I consider what I write worth sharing with others, most of the time. Toward that end I have made myself busy this past week, submitting a variety of fiction and poetry to five different publishers as follows:

One poem, long and previously seen here and over at Ray's old place, to The Salt River Review . It remains to be seen whether or not the editors will consider a blog appearance as previous publication. I hope not as their guidelines indicated that they would not accept work that had already seen the light of day, though the poem has been revised slightly - so I could argue that it is not the same piece that I have featured here or that was honored by Ray.

Three poems to Tebot Bach's (it's welsh for "teapot"!) New Anthology of California Poetry

One long short story to Omnidawn. Actually, only 3,666 words of more than 11,000 per their guidelines.

One short story, previously published in '98, to Dhazie Book's upcoming anthology, Mean. I am pleased to note that I did not have much to offer the folks at Dhazie books on the subject of mean except for this previously published short. Thank goodness previous publication is not an issue for them.

And, Finally, a bunch of haiku inspired forms from my journal to The Heron's Nest.

The odds are that most of this stuff will come back rejected, and it wouldn't be the first time for some of the pieces, but I am hoping for at least two acceptances from this group of submissions.