Where's my story?

"What?" I can hear you saying (Superman loaned me his sense of super hearing for the weekend in exchange for my southwestern meatloaf recipe). "It's Monday! Why don't I have a story?"

Well, dear reader, this is the twenty stamp project, where I write twenty short stories a month and mail them off. You've had your twenty stories already. You'll get a new one on the first of the month.

Meanwhile, let's catch up a bit so I can give you the state of the project.

1. It's the end of the month, so the October stories have been sent out already. Yay! 
2. For those following, the blog is three months behind the short stories, so if you received a post card, the story is yours and yours alone to enjoy (plus any friends and family you share it with) and won't appear on here for three months. During October, we read the stories I wrote in July. Come November, we'll be reading the August stories. I haven't written any holiday themed stories yet, but when I do, trust that they will show up on the blog in a wholly untimely manner.
3. For a while I'd been printing up the photos at Big Box X (not the actual name of the big box store) and I was pretty pleased with the quality. However, BBX has decided maintaining photo printers is for chumps and so it's been down for the past two months. As a result, I've had to print them at Big Box Y, whose printer is in much better shape. It's just a shame the quality is lower. As a result, some pictures have been arriving scratched up and pretty awful. Further, the pictures are darker, so some of the details that helped form the basis of the story don't show up. There's a story you'll see in December about cows in a trailer. You can see the trailer in the photo, but the cows are almost entirely obscured by shadow now. I'll work on finding a new place to print pictures.
4. Also, inexplicably, the post office has been off their game. My first two months, all stories went out without a hitch. I had six returned (sometimes with no reason given at all). I'm not sure if they hired a new guy and he's none too quick (possible), if my handwriting has gotten worse (also possible), or it somehow has to do with the low quality of the photo prints. I've re-sent them and I think most if not all have made it. If I tell you you have one coming and it doesn't arrive in the month I told you you'd be getting it, let me know.
5. Which brings us to the new way of doing things. Whatever the cause of these postcards getting returned scuffed and damaged, I'm tired of spending extra postage having to resend them. So I started putting the post cards in envelopes, which feels like it's sort of defeating the purpose of post cards. Still, it gets pictures and stories to you more reliably and it makes things a little better for you. First, the addresses are printed instead of hand-written which makes them more legible and thus more likely to make it to you. Second, because I couldn't find cheap envelopes, I made my own, which lets me print up the story on a sheet of paper to include, which once again makes things easier on you if you can't read my teeny tiny chicken scratch script. Third, because the stamp isn't actually going on the postcard anymore, it left room for me to draw a one panel comic strip where the stamp would go, so hey, added fun.

Anyway, that's what we're looking at. No story tomorrow or Wednesday, but they'll start coming again the first weekday of each month. Hopefully I can get the printer issue resolved and get better quality photos again.

Until then, have fun, happy Halloween, and keep checking the mailbox!