I received my copy of Issue 6 from “Apex”:http://www.apexdigest.com over the weekend and absolutely devoured it in short order. I loved the writing, loved the stories, and can’t wait to grab the next issue. Of course, I now have to go back and purchase the first five issues, too. I think Apex will probably be one of the magazines that I buy a yearly subscription to.

Reading Apex has also inspired me to go back and rewrite “Spore”:http://open-dialogue.com/blog/2006/04/13/as-expected/. After being rejected (even beforehand), I knew it needed a rewrite; I just didn’t have the inspiration at the time for the direction the story needed to go. I was relatively happy with the last half, but the first half just felt like it took too long to get into what I felt was the meat-and-potatoes of the story, so I want to get into the main events a little more quickly and develop them a little more fully. I also want to change the setting. And I was less than happy about the ending, so that will need to go, too. I guess I’m going to essentially gut the story, take it back to the outline, and start just one step beyond scratch. Maybe I’ll be happier with the final product, and maybe an editor will be happier with it, too.