Six of one and half-dozen of the other

I'm posting this by magic, as one does while traveling. Chances are, that when you read this I'll be in an airplane over the Atlantic, and hopefully not exploding into cloud vapour that will rain over Ireland next week (God not that--the irony would be brutal) or screaming out one last Hail Mary as I fall back to earth with my children in my arms while burning pieces of wreckage fall past us to the chill ocean waves.

People with over-active imaginations shouldn't fly, maybe.

Hopefully at this hour I won't be stuck at Dublin airport watching a "delayed" status while our children go rapidly into meltdown from the combination of excitement/boredom that is any departure lounge. I guess I'm just lucky I don't have six kids, instead of three.

Hmmm. Six. Today's the sixth of July, a day my family's been anticipating for weeks. When we land, if on time, our Irish watches will be telling us it's 6 PM (not knowing that it's really 1 PM on America's east coast), and we'll be facing a six-hour drive to Elizabeth's house. (It should only take five hours, but Himself is driving so getting "a little" lost is guaranteed. It's a game we play, when he gets bored...I'm anticipating a six-hour drive so.)

So many sixes. I wonder how many more we'll find as we travel?

Six Gallery Press offers the most stunningly unhelpful submissions page I've ever come across, made even more interesting by its "West Virginia" cover art there... considering of course that WV is my destination today. One supposes that the trick is to study their list (which has some intriguing books---check them out if you're looking for something a bit different to read), and/or employ the Vulcan mind meld to discover their deepest manuscript desires.

Sixers Review is "where craft hides out". Fiction, poetry, non-fiction, send it along. The reading period is marked "open" as I write this, on Saturday. From their website: "Some call it cosmic, some call it sublime and others call it a string of not-so-nice names." I like this publication's style.

Six Bricks Press is the home of Captain McHurkeydurkey's Utterly Masturbatory Prose Parade, which has been mentioned here before because dang, I just couldn't resist a name like that. "Six Little Things" is the name of their online magazine, which publishes six "little prose things", be they short-short-stories or prose poems, by six folks every quarter. THAT is a lot of sixes. Submissions are currently being accepted for an upcoming issue whose theme is "The Unannounced Guest".

Spaceships and Sixguns is currently closed to submissions (dang!) but promises to be reading again soon: I hope so, because the last editor's column on the site is dated October 2008. I like this one however, and hope it comes back: bookmark that submissions page just in case, if you like pulp-space-adventure-fiction. Look in the sidebar and you'll see that Rhonda Eudaly (one of my favourite story writers btw) has written a piece for this issue entitled "Immense dimensions of your monster" which was written for a competition for stories inspired by the spam in our inboxes.

Sixty-Six is the Journal of Sonnet Studies. Oh this takes me back to my high school days. That's not a good thing. But this journal does sound like a beautiful idea, and if you enjoy writing or reading sonnets, well here it is. They publish an annual chapbook of original sonnets in English, and will also accept queries for articles, essays, etc. Contributors receive two copies of the issue their work appears in (one for you and one for your Mum one supposes?) plus a free copy of the next issue.

Now, I almost always give you five markets, but surely today's list calls for six. For those Saturdays where you're just not feeling like writing a whole lot, have I got a 'market' for you. Write SIX words and you've finished! How kewl is that: Six Word Saturdays is a meme that invites you to write six words from your heart or your day or your subconscious or whatever, and share them with the blogosphere. A fun sixy way to get your link out there and meet a few new bloggy friends too.

I said sixy.

I'll be checking e-mail and blogs as much as I can through the traveling bit, but probably won't have time to respond much yet---I do promise to catch up however when we're settled!


image supplied by Dover Publishing's free clipart samples