Overview:

     2003 was a successful year; but, being terminally pessimistic, I have to admit that it still fell short of my expectations. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, because it will provide more impetus to strive harder to achieve bigger and better things in 2004. My primary regret is my failure to launch Dark Legacy on schedule. The loss of employment back in July impacted every aspect of my life, and my strategy for Dark Legacy had to be shelved for the moment. I’ve spent five months trying to find “the perfect job,” and with each day I lower my expectations a little bit. While I don’t want to return to the same kind of mind-numbing, soul-sucking, stress-inducing, thankless, demeaning, morally bankrupt servitude I was trapped in for the past seventeen years, I am beginning to believe that it may not be possible to earn a living doing something you really enjoy – there are simply too many people and too few positions.

That said, I’ll keep looking anyway; and, all the while, I’ll keep writing. I have two very promising collaborative projects lined up for the New Year. Also, my wife and I have teamed up and won ourselves a feature slot in Beyond Centauri: We’ll be doing a recurring item called “Field Guide to Intergalactic Organisms.” I write the verse, she provides the illustration.

     Manuscript submission totals for 2003:

     Poetry: 1004 poems submitted
     Prose: 125 short stories submitted

     Poems Written in 2003: 101
     Short Stories Written in 2003: 14

     2003 Poetry Sales: 104

     Recent Poetry Acceptances

• "Flea Market" to sidereality
  
• "a clutter of whispers" and "the oubliette" to Quietus Gothic Literary Magazine
  
• "Saturday, November 28, 1998," "slideshow," and "Lautrec" to Inkburns
  
• "Conformity on a Planetary Level, as Perceived by an Earth-Bound Poet," "The Great Curtain," and "Microcosm" to Jupiter
  
• "Lillian," "St. Anthony's Intensive Care," "Driving Home," and "A Long Journey" to Coffee House Poetry
  
• four haiku to Lunatic Chameleon
  
• "Black-Winged Ones," "What Lurks Beneath Mnar," "Ode to the Black Goat of the Wood," and "Alhazred's Demise" to Dreaming in R'Lyeh
  
• "Deep Repose," "The Crawling Chaos," "Remnants of Lost Empires," and "On Dusty Shelves" to Book of Dark Wisdom