How things changed

July 2011 and I am laid in bed with a torn tendon, unable to move I start to write Chronicles of Mark Johnson for some friends. My intention was to give them some pleasure in reading a fantasy story written by somebody they knew, and I did.

At this time, I was writing three of four 3,500 to 5,000 word stories a week, to the extent my friends asked me to stop before I burned out.

Travel forward to today, I have been given the chance to win a second award with a new story and have another in a big contest in Canada and yet, I have trouble getting the urge to finish a short 3,000 word short story for an anthology I was thinking of sending work too -- and being paid -- not much but anything is better than nothing. 

As is my usual, I am on the point of talking myself out of sending the work, not because I think its below me to have work in anthologies but I have done it before and seen no reward.