Tweet, Tweet...The Energy Theif

A post in two parts:

1. Tweeting my own horn. I don't really do "tweet" stories (notice all the itty-bitty markets that have cropped up lately?), but I couldn't resist Tweet the Meat. My tweet is due tomorrow at 6 PM Pacific. Follow them for a load of blood and guts in little bite-sized bits.

2. Give me a form rejection, please. When I queried for the first time in '07, most of those queries went out as traditional snail mail. Of the email I sent, I received a response from about 90%. The times they are a'changing: many agents now state they only respond to email queries when they are interested, leaving a writer in limbo.

This is akin to saying hello to someone and that someone not reciprocating. A little thing, sure, but it saps my "psychic energy". My first e-query for The House Eaters went out in mid March, and I've heard nothing. Rejection? Of course. But I still feel like some bit of me is floating out in the ether, some stranger passing on the street to whom I've said hello and they don't even make eye contact. I beg you for form rejections.

Having a Couple of Poles in the Water

Here's where the ol' Kansas boy shines through; I'm using a fishing metaphor for the querying process.

I've slapped on a new coat of spit and polish to Rock Gods and Scary Monsters and sent a few queries. Yes, I'm still querying The House Eaters. I see this as having two different poles in the water (each sporting different bait). I'm not sure who/what is going to be in the pond, so I might as well bring the whole arsenal. The agent field is much more open for Rock Gods because it is more mainstream.

Here's the baited hook:

"Before his uncle comes home from the war in Iraq, high school senior Elliot Harris is poised to conquer the world as the next big Rock God. But Uncle Eli, Elliot’s guitar hero, returns with deep physical and mental scars, shattering Elliot’s narrow vision of the future in Rock Gods and Scary Monsters..."

Now let's hope someone bites.

(man...I sound like a hick today)

Necrography #1 Now Available

Necrography #1 is now available from the Necrography website for the low price of (are you ready for this bit?) $6.66. (I know...I know...)

My short, "Brian Cullen's Confessional"--a story that involves a child's sandbox in a very unchildlike way--is included, along with a host of other fiction/poetry/art & photography. For the price, it seems to be a good deal.

Fiction:
"Gran'ma's in the Bathroom (...and she's not coming out)" - Ken Goldman
"The Gardener" - Mathew F. Riley
"Omen of the Oven" - Larry Hodges
"The Deadline" - Steve Calvert
"The Interrogation of Phillip Gregg" - Jason Muller
"Whale Bone" - Marlo Dianne
"Brian Cullen's Confessional" - Aaron A. Polson
"Consumed" - Tricia Urlaub
"Creeping Rot" - Tim Kane

Poetry:
"Gaslight Ghoul" - Alexis Child
"The Worst Thing" - Aurelio Rico Lopez III
"Stretching Scars" - William Blake Vogel III
"untitled" - Greg Schwartz

Art and Photography:
"Uncovered" - Charles Wu
"The Gardener" - Owen Priestley
"Spectre of Sanctuary" - Michael Evans
"Mortuary Attendants Needed" - Christopher Woods & Jeff Crouch
"untitled" - G. W. Thomas
"untitled" - Beth Mykkanen
"Spectre" - Nicolas Bodereau
"Cullen" - Charles Wu

Henry's Dream

Music makes this writer write.

For the past couple of years, Brian Eno has had a pretty solid spot on my playlist. Tom Waits will always hold a special place in my dirty ol' heart. But, if I look back at the last fifteen years or so, it's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, hands down.

Enter, Henry's Dream. Probably my favorite album by Cave & co.

From the opening track, the raw instrumentals and dark lyrics twine together in something that is just beautiful. If you like your music moody and bleak, that is.

I sure do.

One of my favorite "love songs" of all time, "Straight to You," gave a name to the mascot of my faux high school in the imaginary town of Springdale:

"Heaven has denied us its kingdom
The saints are drunk howling at the moon
The chariots of angels are colliding
Well, I'll run, babe, but I'll come running
Straight to you"

Yes, the Springdale Saints, "drunk and howling at the moon," were named after a Nick Cave song.

Here's Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds performing "Papa Won't Leave You, Henry" from Henry's Dream. Watch the clip, then listen to the whole album.

(I miss albums...I can listen to Henry's Dream through without skipping a track. Just beautiful.)

Book Review: The Between

Let me tell you what I thought about The Between by Tananarive Due.

I am a snob when it comes to my reading time. I'll read short stories until the apocalypse, especially those written by real, live People I Know^TM, but novels...I need some pretty strong recommendation. As a wannabe writer, I want to emulate the best of the best, and that starts with my reading selections.

The Between was mentioned on this list, posted at the Horror Writer's Association website. I read the blurbs online, checked out Amazon reviews, and decided that this one was it. But it wasn't. Not for me, anyway.

Hilton James has been having bad dreams...he nearly drown as a boy, his grandmother saved him but died in the process. The trick: she had already died once before. Now it seems Hilton is stuck in "the between"--not alive, not dead. Top that off with a racist terrorist that has threatened Hilton's wife, Dede (the only black judge in Dade County, Florida), and the book has its share of suspense.

The story was fine...spooky enough and a little different...but the prose threw me off. The author has worked in the newspaper industry (a features writer and columnist at the Miami Herald), and I hear a journalistic style in the novel. Every character is given a reporterly description, no matter how minor--"middle-aged white woman in black clothes," "Four boys, two white, two black"--at points the prose commits the ultimate "tell instead of show" sin.

Also, I just didn't connect with Hilton as much as I should have to really care about his lot. I loved his wife and kids (both quite precocious), but Hilton didn't really gel for me. His therapist (Raul) and police buddy (Curt) were more genuine characters. Hilton came off as a man to which bad things happened...and sometimes I wondered why he didn't fight back more when reality slipped away.

I've heard Due's later novel, Soul to Keep, is a better read. I might try it after a while. For now, The Between scores a 3/5 for me: a well-written book that just wasn't quite tight enough.

The more I read, the more book blurbs become meaningless. Case in point from the front cover: "A finely honed work that always engages and frequently surprises." - New York Times Book Review

"Always" is a pretty powerful word and shouldn't be used lightly.

What was that Last Line?

The podcast of "The Eyes Have It" cut off at the last moment...I'm sure you can infer the last line, but for those of you who have to know:

"His old pocketknife sat on the table, alone, smeared and sticky with blood. The jar, the eyes, and Gina were nowhere to be found."

That's it. The end. Shuffle along.

Tomorrow: I offer my thoughts on The Between by Tananarive Due.

This Sunday: check out Fifty-Two Stitches for a lovely tale by Jodi Lee.

How to Know You Aren't a Romance Writer

A student recently brought me a copy of Forbidden Passion by Marilyn Cunningham. Yes, it's one of those romance novels: A Candlelight Ecstasy Romance from Dell. Copyright 1987. ISBN: 0-440-12660-6. You can pick up a used copy through the Amazon marketplace for a penny (plus shipping). I wouldn't recommend it, of course, but in the interest of full disclosure...the student purchased it for 49 cents at Goodwill as a joke.

From page 117:

"She felt the night crowding around her."

Oh good, I think, suspense...tension...horror.

"The damp smell of moss came sweetly to her nostrils..."

Wait. Sweetly? Damp smell of moss came sweetly?

"...and the water bouncing over stones blended with the moan of the wind that was tossing the tops of the pines in a haunting melody above her head."

Okay. Stop.

What the #($@&!

"...moan of the wind that..."

Moss doesn't smell sweet, folks. It's rotten, fetid, murky, foul. Not sweet. The wind doesn't moan through the trees...not in that way at least. It whispers. It says dark things. Haunting, maybe, but not that kind of melody.

My horror/romance hybrid:

"The moss, reeking of rot and decay, became a bed for their lustful lovemaking."

Stick that in your Forbidden Passion and smoke it. I just don't do romance.

By the way...do you think Marilyn Cunningham was the author's real name?

Tell Us More About...Spider

Here's how I build a character:

On the way to Mom's house last Spring for Easter, I was listening to my iPod while the rest of the family dozed. Enter song #1, "Spider and I" by Brian Eno.

"Spider and I sit watching the sky
On a world without sound
We knit a web to catch one tiny fly
For our world without sound
We sleep in the mornings
We dream of a ship that sails away
A thousand miles away."

I started thinking about spiders...real spiders. They're basically deaf, y'know. Then I flipped over to Belle and Sebastian, "The Boy Done Wrong Again".

"On Saturday I was an angel shining fair
You shone louder, longer
You put my shine to shame
Put me to shame now

What is it I must do to pay for all my crimes?
What is it I must do?
I would do it all the time
Do it all the time now"

Just a sampling of the lyrics, but I heard Jack's voice, thinking about what he'd done to help Spider survive. You see, Jack is a foster child--now wandering the world as an itinerant with Spider.

The final bit of Spider came from this place:

A company called Gilmore-Tatge used to build parts for grain augers in my home town. Now the factory is empty. You can see a small red #5 flag in the bottom left corner. The factory is adjacent to a park (we were playing there with Grandma and the boys). The old factory is a spooky relic...out of place in a small town. I asked myself, what if Spider lived there with Jack?

The first line of the story:

"[Spider and I] leaned on a window ledge in our abandoned factory home while the full moon lit the streets below like little silver-grey arteries."

This piece haunted me for a year before finding a publisher.

The Character that Killed Three Markets

Yes...you steal from me, I steal from you. Danielle Ferries took the "favorite stories" post and made something different. Now I steal her something different and present my five favorite characters (in no particular order).

Spider - a vampire, but not one of those modern day/emo/sexy vampires. No, Spider is a monster, a creature that loves blood and will drain a pet dog or a small girl in one meal. He has no eyelids but a mouth full of jagged, broken teeth. His surrogate son, a homeless boy named Jack, has to make a tough decision in the end of "Spider and I" (The Devil's Food, TBR).

Gerald Karnowski - AKA "The Surgeon of An Khe". I've killed three markets with this story. (Subbed to one, didn't hear back=market dead; subbed to another, shortlisted=market dead; subbed to a third, accepted, project scrapped...hurm).

Pete Archer - Featured in two tales, "Catalog Sales" (Necrotic Tissue, October 2008) and "Lullaby, Little Monster" (Champagne Shivers, TBR). Pete is a traveling book salesman from the '30s. His books are...magical. Pete isn't exactly evil; he's just misunderstood. Everybody has to eat, right?

Gary Sump - an angry god and strange neighbor. I pity the little people that look up to Gary. All hail Gary Sump. Two Gary Sump stories have been published by Everyday Weirdness.

Tic Toc - a wind-up gorilla who ends up inside a man's skull, pulling the strings. I wrote his story--"The Brass Menagerie" (Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, August 2008)--as a weird riff on The Glass Menagerie. This time, the "gentleman caller" doesn't leave Laura in the end...

My favorite character from a novel is probably iPorn (Shane Willits) from Rock Gods and Scary Monsters. I'll let my dear readers sort out how he earned his nickname.

Back Catalog Shuffle

Over the past few weeks I've been locked in YA novel mode (either revising Rock Gods and Scary Monsters or cramming revisions down the gullet of The House Eaters). Short story mode has sort of slipped away. So this afternoon, a rather rainy and grey day anyway, I've decided to till the soil in some of my "back catalog"--stories that haven't sold or need revisions.

The following tales have been marked as dead:

"Hollis Jones Transformed" (250 words)
"Field Trip" (900 words)
"Dumpster Diving" (950 words)
"Monster Needs a New Pair of Shoes" (1100 words)
"Red Light" (2100 words)
"Replacement Parts" (2200)
"Flesh and Blood" (3800 words)

Around 11300 words. Rest in peace. Your ideas were ill-conceived, ill-executed, or just not that interesting in the first place.

Then I have stories in need of revision:

"Come Out and Play"
"Heroes Live Forever"
"The Qualifying Run"
(all with teen aged boys as protagonists)

"The Things in the Wall"
(in desperate need of a more interesting title)

...and a few more loose bits and pieces.

Speaking of protagonists, I have have enough stories published or sold with teenage/preteen boys as main characters to fill a collection. What would my therapist say about that? (If I had a therapist...)

I'm not really sad to let those stories go to the graveyard. Once upon a time, I would have tried "one more time", but they need to go, now. I've grown as a writer since most of them were written, and they just don't reflect my current voice.

Which led me to the following thought/question/quandary: what are my personal favorites? As long as I'm dreaming, maybe I could put together a top ten...these are the stories I'm proud to have written. So here goes, in no particular order (with a reason why I picked it):

"Catalog Sales" (Necrotic Tissue, October 2008)

• I worked hard on this one to make it "just right"
• it was my qualifying sale for the HWA as an affiliate (I know some folks are lukewarm on the HWA, but Momma always taught me to join professional organizations and old habits die hard)

"The Ox-Cart Man" (Northern Haunts, 2009)

• this story haunts me when I read it, not spooky but sad

"Scavengers Lying in Wait" (Harvest Hill, TBR)

• because they do...because they do

"Dancing Lessons" (Triangulation: Dark Glass, TBR)

• another story that took soooo much work to make right

"Fed by Other Than the Sun" (out in submission land)

• creepy as hell, and the last scene actually scares me

"Tommy of the Flood" (out in submission land)

• another haunting story and Mom actually liked this one

"Homecoming" (Reflection's Edge, March 2008)

• I have some very personal connections with this piece

"Little Fingers" (Arkham Tales, TBR)

• one of those ideas that only comes around once in a while
• plus, the title nails it..."waiting for those little fingers to pull him under" (shivers)

"Spider and I" (The Devil's Food, TBR)

• another highly personal tale
• I worked this one over and over until it found a home, even rewriting for that

...and, for number ten, the next story I write. Sorry, but I have to believe it's going to be good or else I won't write it.

I've procrastinated enough. What are your favorite stories penned by you...published or unpublished. Can you pick? Do you love them all the same?

Well Told Pulp

You can listen to "The Eyes Have It" at Well Told Tales, a short story about a newspaper man and a certain obsession with a dead woman's eyes. I'll let you listen for the rest. It's as pulpy as anything I've written.

I was having one of those "why do I write?" sort of days, and the Well Told Tales podcast helped boost the spirits.

This video boosted my spirits even more: 47 year old Susan Boyle sings on Britain's Got Talent. (it is on YouTube, but embedding is disabled)

If that doesn't inspire you, you're dead.

The Adventures of Chief [Cock] and Deputy Johnson

True story: the school resource officer (a police officer assigned to public school service) gave a little talk to my English classes yesterday. Now, "Deputy Johnson" isn't a funny name by itself...but pair it with the local police chief, last name Koch (he pronounces it Cock). I couldn't help but laugh. Usually, folks pronounce Koch as Coke or Cook around here...

One student suggested, out of earshot of the uniformed men of course, that their names sounded like those of Chippendales dancers.

Which leads me to this clip from Saturday Night Live. Remember "Wong and Owens, Ex-Porn Stars"?

I know. Naughty post today. I'm feeling randy.

Thanks

To all the brave souls who have volunteered their rear-kicking services.


I'd love to share some...

...but I'm broke and the exchange rate sucks right now. So have a...

...or some...

...and pretend it's from me. I'm so generous with pixels.

The House Eaters 2.0

So...I received some feedback from an agent on my full.

Said agent liked the narrative and protagonist's voice, but felt the secondary characters were a bit flat. The subplots needed some steroids. Said agent suggested she would take another look if I wanted to revise. As I mentioned on Monday, I spent the weekend (what free time I could find), cobbling together some extra bits and pieces.

I present, The House Eaters (2.0)...now with more words!

I could really use some beta readers. If interested, please email me at aaron_polson(at)hotmail.com. I will be happy to walk your dog and/or read something of yours.

I like brutally honest kicks in the @$$, so don't hesitate to take out your aggression on my manuscript.

True Confessions of a Word Hater

I mentioned how much I hate the word stuff.

Yesterday, I spent the day scoring state writing assessments (each paper receives two local ratings before being sent to the state office), and the process reminded me of my all-time least favorite word:

Get.

Possibly the weakest verb on the planet, but one to which my students have a rather unhealthy addiction. To make my point, I have been known to write "get" on a piece of paper, tear it into several pieces, and stomp on the remains. One student started calling me "Fuzzy Grammar" and said I should take the show on the road as performance art.

Yes, stuff ires me. Get makes me see red. When I write, I only allow "get" into the prose during dialogue. People say "get" all the time; I say "get" from time to time. But when you write, is that really the best verb you can use?

My Thoughts on Stuff (AKA, an interview)

I've been interviewed as a promotion for Return of the Raven. Read the interview at Horrorbound.com here. Laugh at my picture. (I need a real mug shot some day, one of those sweet "I'm a cool author" kind of pics).

I received some stellar feedback about The House Eaters on Friday, and as a result, spent as much time as I could carve out this weekend adding about 4,000 words to the novel. The characters all have their own little baby plot lines now, and I've cleaned up a few holes. More updates later...I promise.

By the way, I hate the word "stuff", especially when my students use it in their writing. What a weak, weak word.

Return of the Raven

Return of the Raven, featuring my short story "In Hollow Fields", should be available for pre-order from Horrorbound.com soon.

As a collection of short fiction and poetry inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, Return of the Raven should be a fun read.

As an adjunct to my day job, I've started a writing blog with prompts, quotations, grammar tidbits, etc. five days a week. I don't know if any of the content will mean much to my dear readers as it targets a high school audience, but feel free to spread the word about The Write Addiction.

Scrap-tacular

The very generous Brenton Tomlinson has bestowed the Honest S(crap) award upon me, and I am honored.

The Award and Rules:

This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.

The rules are as follows:

1. When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real.

2. Choose a minimum of 5 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have five friends. Show the five random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon.

3. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!

Drum roll please (I don't know if these folks have been nominated, and I don't know if they want to be, but here goes):

Robert Swartwood - brutally honest and one heck of a writer. Robert wrote the best one sentence story I've seen in a long time, "Lea & Perrins", and you can read it at Lamination Colony.

K.C. Shaw - inspires us all to be in love with novel writing. Her story, "Sand-Skin Man" from Beneath Ceaseless Skies was brilliant.

Brendan P. Myers - shares his writing lessons with all comers. We also share a TOC in the forthcoming Dead World: Undead Stories.

Rebecca Nazar - has a unique and (pardon the riff on her blog title) whimsical voice, when her writing isn't meandering down the dark side, that is.

Jeremy Kelly - is on vacation, so won't it be a surprise to win this prestigious award when he returns. I appreciate his dark tone and love of Tom Waits.

Ten honest things:

1. I prefer wearing glasses over contacts because I'm lazy.

2. I haven't taken down my Halloween decorations in my classroom. Why should I?

3. I used to hate, absolutely loathe, Shakespeare. Now, I can't have enough. My students groan, but we read a play in every class I teach. Of course I prefer the tragedies.

4. The scars on my face are from a biking accident. I like to say I was "mountain biking". I was really just on a little jaunt around my neighborhood when the rear brake line snapped. Since the front brakes were intact, I was sent over the handlebars, face first. I can't remember four hours of my life...it's not exactly like being asleep (I know time has passed when I sleep). Those four hours are just gone.

5. I never wanted to be a writer when I was growing up. I always wanted to be a paleontologist.

6. I never wanted to be a teacher when I was growing up. (see #6 above)

7. I've had three tremendous school-boy crushes in my life. One was on my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Reed. The second was on a classmate in fifth grade. She really liked horses, so I bought myself a rather lame unicorn diary as if to say, "I like horses, too". The third was on a girl in high school who said I reminded her of Lloyd Dobler from Say Anything. I've been a John Cusack fan since.

8. Although I'm 6'3", I've never played organized basketball.

9. We thought our second son was going to be a girl. Her name would have been Ellen. I named a character in my first book Ellen instead.

10. I still call Star Wars IV: A New Hope by its real name: Star Wars.

Honesty is the best policy. I guess.

Fahrenheit 451

I'm so glad that it's time to teach one of my favorite books.

When a student said, "that's the most horrible thing I've ever seen." My response was: "Not as bad as your classmates who won't even read a word of the book."

Book Recommendation: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

I've always been a big fan of H.G. Wells. Evidently, so was John Wyndham, and it shows.

The Day of the Triffids is a fantastic post-apocalyptic romp that really leaves one thinking about what would happen after "the end". The book, published in 1951, reads almost like a zombie-apocalypse but with killer plants. If the premise sounds silly, it's not in practice. It's terrifying.

When I finished, I wondered if George Romero hadn't read the novel...perhaps inspiring Night of the Living Dead? Okay, that might be a far-fetched idea, but the comparison works.

The narrator/protagonist, Bill, wakes in a hospital after having bandages on his eyes due to an accident with the eponymous triffids. He was wearing a helmet, which protected him for the most part; the triffids are cultivated for their oil, which has a "variety of uses". But, these killer plants can down a person with one sting of their poison, and they feed on the corpses. Well, Bill's accident proves to be quite fortuitous, because a strange "meteor shower" leaves most of humanity blind while he is in the hospital. (You will, dear reader, discover that the meteor shower was nothing of the sort...)

The only advantage mankind had over the triffids was sight. Now that most people are blind...have you ever really wondered what would happen if 99% of the planet went blind overnight. Terrifying.

Wyndham does a fair bit of philosophizing about the nature of mankind, especially through the kinds of societies that emerge after the apocalypse. In that way, it is easy to offer a Marxist type criticism of the book. But I believe the author strikes at something much more primal, something at the core of human nature beyond simple societal structures. Is humankind, at the heart, self-destructive or hopeful?

As with any book, there are a few stumbles, but it was a tremendous read. I'll give it a solid 4.5/5. Its my blog, so I have the prerogative to distribute half-points as I will.

Now, why do I read so "slow"? To tell the truth, I don't. It takes me forever to read a book because I only spend about five minutes a day reading for pleasure. Between writing, my family, and my job...you have the picture, I'm sure. Once a book picks up at the climax, I'm up all night. (As I was Saturday into Sunday.) I also have to read in a near sensory-vacuum. I know many people who can read anytime/anywhere. Not so with this fellow. I need a nice, quiet, semi-dark space. If I manage a book a month during the school year, I'm doing well. I wish I had more time, really, because books like Triffids are fantastic.

The Horror of...Children's Books?

I have a flash piece entitled "Fuzzy" online at Flashes in the Dark today. This one was inspired by Owen, a children's book by Kevin Henkes about a little mouse-boy who doesn't want to give up his fuzzy yellow blanket. (The book also inspired my oldest son's name.)

How do I decide what to write? I like to steal from children's literature. Well, in Owen, the title character has a blanket he loves very much. So much so, that the blanket goes with him everywhere. The writer in me asked, "What about after death?" (I had just finished Pet Sematary when I wrote "Fuzzy", so there you go...)

The main conflict in Owen revolves around the fact that the little boy is too old for his blanket (going off to school) and his parents need to find a way of separating him from the fuzzy companion. In my story, well...a boy always knows his special blanket. I'll leave it at that.

Tomorrow: A review of The Day of the Triffids. Yes, I take "forever" to finish a book. More on that tomorrow, too.

Weird Friday

If this doesn't make you scratch your head...



You might be dead.

Because I Need Some Direction...

I've made some goals for April.

Rock Gods and Scary Monsters needs some work. I felt like it was finished, but it isn't nearly as tight as The House Eaters. Different kind of book, sure, but The House Eaters moves along. It has mass and momentum. I want to rework the beginning of Rock Gods and give it a "grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let go" opening. I'm also toying with the idea of listing a song from Elliot's playlist with each chapter. His ex-girlfriend is going to show up, too, acting as a bit of a siren. The book is definitely high concept (effects of war on the family, bildungsroman, all that), and I want it to be as sparkly as possible.

So I want the book finished by the end of the month. I'd like to start querying in May.

On the short story front, I have one flash that needs to be edited and sent and one short story I'd like to release to the wild in the next few weeks. According to my resolutions, I need one solid short story written this month. I think I can handle that. If I have time, I may start tinkering with a new work of longer fiction. This one is straight horror.

The bottom line: I want to refocus on longer fiction. I will see a book in print someday, but only if I do the work to make it happen.

I Wish This Were an April Fool's Joke

Really, I do.

When I started my writing adventure, I was fond of markets that accepted simultaneous submissions. I was unpublished and desperate. I think I've been cured, once and for all, of that fondness.

I had a piece accepted by a market today that I pulled from said market over a month ago. My withdrawal letter evidently slipped between the cracks in the Interweb^TM, so I had to write an apology and pull the story from publication.

I feel stupid and ashamed. I'm done with simultaneous submissions. Period.

Except for novels, that is. Except for novels. Having more than one offer for one of those would be akin to a thermodynamic miracle.

Yes, the Morlocks are from The Time Machine. If you've never read the book, I highly recommend it. Download the text for free at Project Gutenberg. Reading the book will help you understand my Wiki / Morlock comparison.