It's all happening. Kinda.

아깝다. I heard back from the first press I sent my chapbook to. It was getting down to the wire of the response deadline, so I knew it had to be close, but I knew not to get my hopes up, as I really think quite highly of the things this press puts out, they only publish three chapbooks a year, and.. my first time out? Really?

Well, I got an answer back saying that they've declined but they wanted me to know that it was in the final running, and they really enjoyed reading it. On the one hand, I'm disappointed. I would have been proud to have their publication credit. On the other, it gives me a little hope that the work really is publishable. If I can just land it in the right place at the right time.

The problem now is that a lot of presses are shutting down for a summer break. The one press I submitted to doesn't accept simultaneous, so I had to wait it out before I could send it off to anyone else. And now there's a massive lull. But there is one other press I really admire that holds their open submission period during the month of June. So I've got to get that out tonight, basically.

Otherwise, life is not too bad. B and I have run into a slight snag with the domain that we've got to get worked out before we can launch. I think we may have complicated things a bit by mixing our languages and countries of origin for various aspects of the site, and now our domain email won't connect to our forwarding address. I have no idea what to do about that, as I've not had any idea about a lot of the things we've been doing, at the start, but like all of those as well, I'm going to figure it out.

With any luck, about this time next week, I'll be posting the link and opening submissions.

On the personal life front, we're moving B into the new place this weekend. We're having some furniture delivery trauma which we've also not quite worked out yet. Basically, I'm really, really particular about furniture and won't just choose whatever will work out of the nearest furniture shop. I think I'm driving B a bit crazy because I want everything to be exactly the way that I want it to be. Because of that, we're having to order a lot of different things from a lot of different places, and most of them don't have any kind of reliable delivery time. And living in a fourth floor walkup, there's the chance that they delivery guy could refuse to carry our shit up. So we may just have to wait until I'm on vacation and can be there to babysit the place all during the day to get it all sorted.

We did, at least, manage to get the bed. So B won't have to sleep on the floor.

Tonight I'm making a cherry shortcake for B, who's been working nonstop for two weeks now. He's spent two nights at the office, working nearly 24 hours straight, and has been in on Saturdays and Sundays as well. The good news is, it seems this was the push he needed to finally quit his job. He's officially an independent freelancer starting July 1st.

Things are happening. Life is happening. Slowly but surely. But for now, it's a weekend of cut off shorts and t-shirts, scrubbing floors and ordering pizza, putting furniture together -- maybe a beer or two on the roof for the "super moon". That doesn't sound too bad, actually, does it?