An update

I haven’t posted for awhile about what I’m working on. So here’s an update on what I’ve done since October 6.

• finished first draft of Without Leave, a 3,500-word story about a warrior who has had his fill of battle.
• finished first draft of The Night Bus Doesn’t Stop at Tuesday Anymore, a 1,000-word flash about a sleepy fellow on a time-traveling bus.
• finished first draft of Distant Voices, a 2,500-word tale about a painter who hears voices that may not be just in his head.
• completed an outline for my SF novel, which I am now calling Ties of Blood. I added a subplot that involves a traveling circus and got a really clear picture of who my antagonist is and the details of what he wants.
• wrote another 12, 500 words toward the end of Ties of Blood.
• rewrote Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams, after getting a really remarkable critique from Tom Crosshill. I’m calling the rewrite The Fluting Man. God, I love good critiques. Tom gets right to the heart of the story, as does Kelly Green and Gay Degani. The three of them are fast becoming my preferred first readers

I’m going to let the three first drafts and the rewrite sit and cool for a week or so, and then I’ll brush their hair and scrub their faces. Get them ready to send out into the world.

An update

I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall this morning. It’s a cautionary tale about mucking about with the natural order of things, even when it appears that there has been crossed signals. 2,800 words. I’m pleased with it now, but I’ll let it set a few days and then go back to it. If I still feel good about it then, I’ll send it out.

I also have completed the outline for my SF novel, Power in the Blood, and have 10,000 words in the file. I’ll tell you more about it when it’s a bit further along.

UPDATING THE UPDATE (Monday, October 13, 2009): It has been a week since I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall, so I ran it through my critters. I wound up changing the POV from first-person to third-person, doing a full rewrite and adding 300 words.

Oh, the humanity!

My work station is littered with the skeletal remains of old paragraphs and bloodied by the wholesale slaughter of words. Even so, she lives and is a better story. A writer who ignores an honest critique does so at her peril.

I’m going to comb its adjectives and brush its verbs now, so that I can send it off to Clarke’s World before the day is through.

At Flash Fiction Chronicles

Gay Degani is in Vermont for a month-long writer’s retreat (she’s blogging about it at Words in Place) , but before she left, we chatted about this and that for an interview at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

It’s posted today, if you would like to slip on over there and check it out.

Now playing in Lawrence

It’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting,in Aimee’s Place, an internet cafe in downtown Lawrence,  Kansas, having breakfast, chatting with some of the other folks participating in the SF Writers’ Workshop — and blogging, of course.

Yesterday’s trip was uneventful, other than a spectacular view of the Cascade Mountains, as we flew east out of Seattle. At Kansas City International Airport, A limousine service was waiting for me for the 60-minute trip to Lawrence.  I had a pleasant chat with the driver, a fellow named Mike Shapiro about writing and movies and Las Vegas, where he worked for twenty-plus years in various casinos.

I love striking up conversations with strangers. It turns out that Mike’s cousin is executive producer for The United States of Tara, the Showtime series starring Toni Collette and John Corbett, which is one of my favorite television shows.  Thanks for the swell chat, Mike.

We arrived right on time, at the University of Kansas dormitory that will be my home for the next two weeks.  After settling in, I sat up until past midnight, chatting with Chris McKitterick, the program’s assistant director, Kij Johnson, for the novel-writing portion of the workshop, and four or five other early arrivals.

What a hoot to have a chance to talk to other writers who love science fiction as much as I do.

I was up early this morning to work on the first round of critiques — I have four of six done now — and wrote for a couple of hours on Being Abednego, the new piece I working on.  4,500 words so far, with maybe another 5,000 or 6,000 to go.  I hope to finish it before the workshop ends.  It is so cool that the more I write longer pieces, the easier it is to go those distances.     Stretching writing muscles, I suppose.

And so to breakfast then, which is almost done.  The introductory session for the workshop is later this afternoon.  We’re headed back to the dorm for more chat.

More later.

Wherever the muse may take me

I have been remiss about keeping my words written meter up to date.

There are a couple of reasons.

First, I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time working on 10Flash, the genre flash fiction e-zine I’m starting up July 1st. That is moving along quite well. I’ve received six of the issue’s ten stories, and have them entered and formatted, with the other four promised “soon”.

Just five more weeks and I am chuffed about that.

Second, I’ve been writing, but I’ve only finished one story since mid-April, a piece of flash I wrote Thursday night I am calling, We Who Are Ernest Now Salute You.

I do have three others in the works, though, hopscotching from one to the other as the Muse strikes me.

Doctor Sue’s Dr. Seuss is about half-way home, at 2,700 words; One Last Kiss, at 4,900 words, is all but done and A Prayer to Saint Barbara is about 3,000 words away from being finished. I’ve got 5,300 words written there.

But I keep getting interrupted by ideas. Good ideas that I just can’t tell to come back sometime next Thursday afternoon because I’m busy at the moment. If I say that, they may go away and never return.

And it is so strange, don’t you think, where ideas come from. If I had to explain, I couldn’t do it. I had another one hit me last night. I’m calling it Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall. I did 1,500 words, with another 1,500-2,500 to come soon — I hope.

Here’s the start:

Most days, Alice felt as if she were sneaking about in a world overrun by midgets.

It wasn’t just that she was so much larger than everyone else, even at her smallest. Everyone seemed preoccupied with their little worries, as well. No one had time to offer sympathy for Alice’s big problems. All they did was look up at her and run away, screaming. Such petty behavior.

Tom Petty. Serengeti. Try to hold it steady, Betty.

That was the other thing that Dodgson’s pills had inflicted upon her. A repetition and rhyming of certain words, over and over again in her mind until she had to say them aloud or go bonkers. It was called obsessive- compulsive behavior; Alice knew that, she had read it once in a book. And it wasn’t always easy to read these days. But Alice stuck with it, even when the books were smaller than the palm of her hand.

After all, it was the one thing she had to do to pass the time.

So, I’ll catch up my meter first chance. And I have stories soon to be published — one at Big Pulp, another at Flash Fiction Online and a third at Morpheus Tales. I’ll let you know when they’re available for you to peruse.

Hope those of you who live in the States have a swell Memorial Day weekend and that the rest of you have clear skies and warm weather.