Internet Hell and why we need it

Ok. I admit it. I use AOL. Because I've had it as my first internet connection(Hey, didn't everyone???)... my kids were teens at the time and that's what they wanted. Then later I didn't want to hassle with changing. Plus I need a dial-up connection for when we go to the coast. So the bottom line is that I still use AOL for my email, although I also have a gmail account. So a couple of days ago I noticed that my saved to my pc mail folder weren't showing up. Which is where all my writing submissions correspondence is saved. Today, after almost 2 hours on the phone with tech support and trying to restore, uninstalling, downloading a new program, etc., I find the mail file is corrupt and gone. Probably not the end of the world, I also have most of the mail saved on my laptop -- but not all because sometimes I forget to transfer it. Still, I can do without it. I just think we could have saved an hour and a half if they would have just showed me which folder on My Computer has my email file (everything is coded) and helped me look to see if the emails are there or not. If they're gone, well I'm pissed but I understand these things happen with computers. But I've wasted almost 2 hours of my time and the "new" improved AOL version is one I'm not liking so far -- it's "vista ready" and I don't think it's going to run well on my pc. Top that off with my internet connection is poor today due to the wind blowing outside and mark me up as TOTALLY FRUSTRATED. With a headache. And more work to go yet.

So enough of that. Writing news: I got up off my dead ass and subbed two stories the other day. One is a weird story that's *supposed* to be a cross between humor/dark fantasy/horror that I'd about given up on. But I got a wild hair and decided to keep trying with it. And the other is my most recently rejected sub from Interzone that I actually goofed up on. I meant to send it to one market, typed up the cover letter and just needed to put it in the envelope and go by stamps. And in my wild-hair mode, I forgot which story I was subbing where and went online and decided to sub that story to another market. THEN after it was done, I recalled that story was supposed to go to market X, not Y. Crapperooni. Oh well. It's all good in the end, right? So I actually have about 6 or 7 stories subbed at the moment.

As far as writing. My story I was half done with and so excited about ran up against a logic problem. And now it's ground to a halt. The problem? My protag is going to leave his village in order to rescue a baby that is supposed to be sacrificed. But everyone believes the sacrifices MUST happen to keep the people safe. So if he doesn't do the sacrifice, doesn't that mean that he leaves the people in danger? Even though it's not true, neither he nor the people know that. And I can't figure out a way for anyone to know that so he can overhear it. And I can't have the reader at the end of the story thinking, well yeah he's safe and so is the baby, but what about the rest of the people that he left behind to pretty much die. So crappo. I'm still waiting for inspiration to strike me. It occurs to me that all I really need to do then is to change the reason for the sacrifices. But aren't sacrifices always to appease the gods to keep bad things from happening? And I don't have in mind at all for him to take the people with him to safety. No, he must go alone. Not necessarily with the baby of course. But changing that changes the whole story and I don't think I have a big enough conflict without that. So I'm at a catch-22 position here. Deadlocked. Brain dead. Conflicted on which way to go.

Over and out.