Looks like I got back from the mailbox just in time. It's pouring down rain now, but the juncos outside my window don't seem to care. They're hopping around, flashing their white tail feathers and bickering about whose piece of millet is whose.

But in spite of the rain and the fact that I'm trying to convince myself that I'm not catching a cold, I'm quite excited. My contributor's copy of Magnapoets arrived today, complete with confetti (it's the Anniversary Issue). I'd completely forgotten that it's a Canadian literary journal, so that means I'm now an internationally published poet. *Grin.* It's just a single haiku that I wrote on the bus trip home from Issaquah Salmon Days last autumn, but still, I'm pleased. Check out their site at http://www.magnapoets.com/

Anyway, just wanted to share. Back to hammering away at "Do You Believe in Fairies?"

P.S.
Have you checked out the website for Tundra yet? http://sites.google.com/site/tundrashortpoem/ Things are happening on it...truly!

The weather has returned to rainyness. Never a good sign when you get up in the morning and it starts getting darker before you've finished your breakfast. Ah well, it's good weather for writing.

Unfortunately, what I want to write is not my NaNo novel. Not this novel, at least. I have somehow, though no fault of my own, gotten enamoured with Lucian and his story again, Lucian being the protagonist of last November's NaNo novel. He also appears in 4 short stories and several others that are still percolating in my head and in notebooks. This returning infatuation would have been useful about 3 weeks ago, though what I want to write is a continuation of "Nullum Desiderium" (last Nov.'s novel), picking up from right after the climax, so I'm not sure about how I would have worked that logistically into NaNoWriMo. But had I been writing about Lucian this month, I probably would have hit 50,000 words by now. (I am aiming for 40,200 today.) Sigh. I blame Torchwood. Anyway, just needed to get that out of my system so I can return to the novel I'm supposed to be working on this month, tentatively titled, "Grab the Chickens and Run!"

On a non-noveling note, you can check out four of my haiku on the Haiku NW website. Here's the link: http://sites.google.com/site/haikunorthwest/poems-by-members/tanya-mcdonald . Earlier this week, I found out that bottle rockets has accepted two of my poems for their Feb. '09 issue. One of them is a tanka, the first I've ever written or submitted (thanks to MDW for his help in revising a few lines), so I'm excited about that. Here's the link to the site: http://www.bottlerocketspress.com/ . So if anyone's keeping track, that's 10 poems I've gotten accepted for publication so far this year...out of 99 submitted. Granted, I won't hear back from The Heron's Nest until early January, so I guess it's really 10 poems accepted out of 89, but either way, I feel both humbled and pretty tickled about it. If next year by this time I can add a short story publishing credit to that list, I'll be ecstatic.

All right, time to put the laundry in the dryer and get on with the business of banging out a few thousand words of my NaNo novel. The sooner I finish it, the sooner I can dive headlong into Lucian's story again. :)

Well, I just caught up on my word count for yesterday. (Stands up, stretches, sits back down.) Apparently writing in a dim room with soundtrack music from "The Dark Knight," "Transformers," "Batman Begins," and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" is working. I've been drinking copious amounts of tea all day, which means my bladder has been politely reminding me to get up and stretch throughout the long novelling hours. Belle has been lending her support by sleeping most of the day in the chair opposite mine in the front room. But now it's time to make a quick run to the grocery store, followed by dinner of some variety and more novelling. If I can make 5,001 words by bedtime, I'll be pleased.

Speaking of pleased, I just found out that I got a haiku accepted for print publication in the January issue of Magnapoets. Check them out! http://www.magnapoets.com/