Pirate Anthology deadline -- 23 hours and counting

At least, I think it's 23 hours. Website says deadline is May 23. Does that mean midnight on May 23 or midnight on May 24? Or noon, or 10 AM, or 3 PM on May 23?

I'm taking it to mean midnight on May 24, but here's the thing: I'm not quite done with the first draft. I'll have to make time for a very basic edit, I'll have no time at all to polish. So, do I

a) submit it tomorrow anyway, risking that they'll publish something that is less than my best work,

or

b) hang onto it, finish it, polish it, and save it for an opportunity at a later date?

If I choose 'a', I could be mucking up my reputation in the future. If I choose 'b', I may never have another chance.

How many times in a row can you say "bugger" before your head explodes?

May GRW meeting -- Dianna Love and Barbara Vey

Great meeting today (well, they're all great, aren't they?!). Pam got PRO-pinned by Nikki, who didn't beat her or do anything else terrible. Dianne Love and Barbara Vey spoke about reader loyalty: how to get it and how to lose it. I took copious notes that I hope will make more sense than last meeting's notes, when I go to transcribe them. Which will probably have to wait until after Monday. Tick, tock, tick, tock, and I'm not talking about Ke$ha.

Might go take a nap first, though -- got up early and drove home in toasty hot car and fighting a cold that had better not be what G brought back from CA a week ago and is still sick with.

Achievement for the day: learned to put links into post (if it worked). ETA: Yay!!

working on short story -- panic setting in

I'm trying to write a pirate short story for the "Cross Bones" Dreamspinner anthology: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/pages.php?pID=7&CDpath=0 (sorry, I don't know how to do links in blogspot), and I'm 2700 words in with a 12,000 word limit, and no porn yet. Am I in trouble? The romantic leads don't even meet until over 1000 words in. Am I in trouble?? The deadline is May 23. AM I IN TROUBLE??!?!?

I've had the story pretty much mapped out on the hard drive and in my head for a few weeks, but I need to stop futzing around and write the damn thing. And then when I do, stuff changes.

Once I'd written the beginning, I thought I might cut most of it, but now I'm not sure, I might need it for later stuff to make sense. But it seems a long way in with no sexual tension yet, no first kiss yet, for a short story.

Eh, just needed to whine/vent.

Critique group! And book recs

Had the first meeting of our critique group today, and it went way better than I could have hoped. Tiana, Cheryl, and Evangeline are all very nice, smart, and encouraging, so I have great hopes for the group.

Currently reading Suzanne Brockmann's "Prince Joe", one of two books in a combo that I bought at the GRW meeting she spoke at. The other book is "Forever Blue", and the combo is called "Tall, Dark and Dangerous". The cover shows a guy in a white shirt with a six-pack: the good kind, not the beer kind. The last romance novel I read was so awful that I was worried that maybe I didn't like the genre anymore, but her characters grabbed me and I was totally sucked in. I'd never read anything by her before, but now I understand why she's so popular.

Before that book, I read "The Help", by Kathryn Stockett. I don't usually read literary fiction, but I like Emma Stone and she's in the movie version that's coming out in August, so I decided to read the book first. It grabbed me the way few books have recently.

And if you want a lesson on "voice", read that book! It's told in first person by three different characters, each of whom narrate a few chapters at a time, and it's very clear, even without the labels at the top of each new section, whose story it is.

So who wants to go see the movie with me when it comes out?!?!?!!

And now I'm going to go back to working on that story with the May 23 deadline. :)

ETA: trying to change settings so the time comes up correctly....