I had been planning to send the current story-in-progress to Writers of the Future for the 2nd quarter contest. the deadline for that one is postmark by wednesday. However, I’m not happy enough with how it’s coming together to be satisfied it will be done by then.
Fortunately, I just withdrew a story from a market that died, sort of. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t double-dipping. Turns out I needn’t have worried, the editor apparently never got it. I was skeptical because that story was another one that writing seemed like pulling teeth. but after reading through it, it’s really not a bad story. You can say that about your own work after some time has passed and you’ve forgotten the details. It’s like somebody else wrote the story and you just read it a long time ago.
It was originally written for Jay Lake’s Footprints anthology, but was an unorthodox entry that just barely met the guidelines.  The theme was human artifacts discovered by alien species long after humanity goes extinct. I chose to use our electromagnetic emissions as the artifact, and that isn’t clear in the story from page one. So, as I said, a bit unorthodox.
The only other market it has been was Talebones, the market that died. Before rereading it last night, I didn’t regard the story very highly. I had second thoughts after reading it. I actually have a lot of faith in the story, so off it goes into the world.