The last week or two have been busy and exciting, particularly on the submission/publication front. Regular readers of this blog will already know that in the last few days I have had work accepted in both 100 Stories for Haiti, the charity anthology that is to be published very soon in both ebook and paperback formats and the Six Sentences Love collection due to arrive in time for Valentine’s day.

100 Stories for Haiti has a revised line-up released over the weekend and as soon as it is available I’ll post links here for those of you wanting to grab a copy. This project is an exciting prospect as it is an opportunity to read some excellent stories AND help a worthy cause. The Six Sentences Love collection will be available next week. Again, I’ll post links as soon as the collection is available.

In addition to my acceptance in these collections I received a third acceptance this week, this time for a story submitted for the Friday Flash Best of 2009 or #BOFF as it is becoming known on twitter. Friday Flash is an event that takes place every Friday, with writers from all over the internet posting stories on their blogs and links on twitter with the #fridayflash hashtag. You can find out all about Friday Flash on J. M. Strother’s Mad Utopia website.

It wasn’t all roses on the submission front this week though, as I received a rejection from the Absolute X-Press quarter one challenge. All the best to everyone who got into that collection, including the ever excellent Jodi Cleghorn. Absolute X-press run challenges each quarter, so I will be having another crack at getting something in there. In terms of outstanding submissions, two more stories have gone out this week increasing the total of submissions/competition entries out in the wild to four. I’ll post news on these as and when I hear back.

Other big news is that I will be writing a story as part of the team on the next Chinese Whisperings anthology. I recently reviewed the first CW collection, The Red Book, which features inter-weaving stories from 10 emerging writers. This year, editors Paul Anderson and Jodi Cleghorn have even bigger plans, doubling the number of authors working on the project to twenty, ten men and ten women. I will be writing my story in the Spring before passing the baton on to those who come after me and the anthology is scheduled to appear later this year.

All in all some exciting news, but even that is not the best news this week. My last piece of news arrived on Thursday when my wife and I attended her 20 week scan for our third baby. We have been very lucky with our kids, her last two pregnancies each producing a beautiful, healthy baby boy and both our lads are growing into mighty fine little men. On Thursday we were told with a 99.99% assurance from the doctor (apparently out of 500 or so scans like this he has done, he has been wrong about the sex only once) that the newest addition will be a little girl. That should help mix things up in the Powell household around mid-June. While we had no preference and would have been just as happy with another boy, that baby 3 is a girl is great news and we are all excited about meeting the newest addition to our family.

And after all that, I think I need to go for a lie down.