Meanwhile…

Or insert ethnic/cultural-appropriate season’s greetings here.

I still function! I’ve gotten very little done, though, and this upcoming week looks to be more of the same. Oh cruel irony!

The wife got me The Big Lebowski 10th Anniversary Limited Edition Bowling Ball DVD set. It’s awesome! The parents got me the first season of Battlestar Galactica, equally awesome. More delights no doubt await me later today.

We’ve found the one station not playing A Christmas Story, and it is playing Batman Returns.

Hope everyone is having a good holiday!

So at today’s Writer’s Ink meeting I declared that I would have a story ready for the group to crit in just a few weeks. I’d actually hoped to have a story done by the end of this month anyway, but this gives me an actual deadline to motivate me. If nothing else, it gives me something to fail at, a skill for which I’ve had decades of practice.

I’ve decided to return to the story of my android detective, Asta, who was featured in my published story, “Shades of Red,” earlier this year. He’s a fun character, so I’ve been wanting to write about his origins for a while. I crammed in some Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett earlier this year. I have much of the plot worked out in my head already, and there are certain scenes that are burning up my brain wanting to get out.

What I’m mostly worried about is capturing the voice. I tend to have a simple, straightforward writing style, I think. Some would probably say too simple. There’s a particular flourish to that noir style that I’ll be aiming for. We’ll see if I can pull it off. Actually, when I read KC’s “Oh Woman of Easy Virtue” last month at EDF I thought, “Wow, that’s exactly the sound I need.” Maybe if I send KC my notes she can just write it for me.

This story will also work perfectly for the group’s cross-genre collection this year, being a sort of sci fi crime story set in the ’30s.

And for the record, Dashiell Hammett is my favorite author name ever.

Title ideas:

The Naked Gear

Atomic Clocks with Dirty Faces

I Was a Fugitive from a Pullys and Levers Gang

The Thin Blue Man

…actually I kind of like that Atomic Clocks one.

Not much to report at the moment. I’m mostly just trying to get through this last week of work before I’m out on vacation. I should start pumping out some more work next week. In a bored moment yesterday I wrote up this fun little scene. I think I’ll end up using it as part of the larger story about these two characters, both of whom you may recognize if you’ve been reading this blog for very long. Just a couple of hundred words.

Continue reading

Check out that cover! Our friends Jordan and Camille, from the barren tundras of their frosty homeland in Canada, have produced excellent work.

Yes, the Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 Anthology is finished and ready to order, both in a handsome hardcover edition and a paperback. You’ll find my flash crime mystery “Aftershocks” as well as 99 other awesome stories.

You can purchase it here!

Last night I was playing around with a little flash piece about a super-speedster. I’m not sure it’s working out, and I think maybe the point of view is the problem. I think this might be too introspective and too slow for a character defined by speed. It feels like it should have more energy. I started off like this because I imagine the world must seem like a very slow, still place to someone who exists between the seconds. Anyway, here’s a section of it. I may actually finish it like this, then as an experiment write it in the third person, just to see the difference. I also have a tendency, in first person, to stray into present tense, which is just irritating.

I’m not so sure about his name, either, but that’s another matter. Less than 500 words. Continue reading

I have to give a shout out for fellow Writer’s Inker Sandra, who just published her first story over at Mirror Dance. Check it out!

Erin has a story over there as well, but, you know. She’s old news by now.