Thanks, Aubrey. You're the first one to ask for this week, so unless we get a ton of late requests you should be good to go for Monday.
As for the length question--personally I think 8k words should be alright (though probably not much higher) but maybe the folks who are regularly reading submissions will want to weigh in. (I look forward to the day when I can actually start regularly reading submissions again, but I keep saying that, don't I?)