Fortified by a variety of over-the-counter drugs, I have mustered the energy to finish “Kingspeaker,” my required story for the month. (“Schroedinger’s Crone” is officially disbarred, on the grounds that we’re pretty sure it’s supposed to be a poem instead.) I still feel like I kind of had to shoehorn in that one thing, but hey, that’s what revision is for: to make the shoehorning look natural. Right?

4600 words for this draft, more than half of them written today. So it often goes, with short stories.

I think next month’s story will be “Once a Goddess,” after a fruitful discussion earlier this week. The thing’s been cooling its heels for nearly six years; high time it went somewhere.