Yes, I’m talking about my novel. You wouldn’t come here if you weren’t curious about it, would you?

It’s a little over 35,000 words right now, or about a third of the way through. Unfortunately, I think I’m at least at the halfway point in plot. The first two chapters are going to require a drastic rewrite - I may delete them entirely and rewrite them from memory when I’m done. I began the book with insufficient prewriting, and it shows, as the early chapters struggle in tone, theme, and character. I routinely failed to make my quota, too, and am currently 8500 words behind, which means I’d need to write 10,000 words in one day to regain my schedule.

But lately I have recovered from my lackadaisicality and made my quota easily. I have DRAGON AGE to thank for this. Yes, as weird as it seems, a video game has actually increased my productivity. Previously, when I had no DRAGON AGE to look forward to, I would dawdle through my writing, taking time off to check Facebook and Gmail and whathaveyou, lose focus, have difficulty reaching my quota, and what I did write sucked as a result of that drifting focus. But with DRAGON AGE waiting for me, I work hard, I work quickly, and my book has become much better. It began as another picaresque, but has become a science vs. faith discussion that I think is not too preachy.

The book also has a bit of scifi in it, too, as my heroes stumble through space and time. They’ve already visited a distant world, populated by stone angels sitting at the “axis of spacetime”, and met a mysterious figure who tells them about magnetospheres and probability matrices. It’s fun.

Talented Friend Alex Burns is the EDF of the day. Great title. Story’s not bad, either.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Piccolet | No Comments »

Talented Friend Stephanie Scarborough has a story up at EDF. It has “8 Bit” in the title, so you know you must read it, you twenty-somethings!

Posted in My Talented Friends | No Comments »

Alex has published over at Big Pulp; it’s a good story, and a quick read, so check it out!

Piccolet is ticking right along at 4500 words. They’re mostly pretty good. One of them is “torquetum”.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Piccolet | 2 Comments »

(I just typed some random words for the title of this entry, but now that I think about it, that could be a pretty awesome short story.)

Some of my talented friends are currently undergoing the Story Every Day contest, where they write a … story every day … for fifteen days. Their daring is to be congratulated, and their efforts encouraged. Bravo!

I would like to add that listening to Gogol Bordello makes me feel more alive. I recommend them.

I told my grandfather that my next novel would be set in Texas, and could he please, for my birthday, send me a few books that he considers representative of Texas authors? But no more Larry McMurtry, I’m up to my neck in him. A few weeks later, I got a hefty box of mostly J. Frank Dobie hardbacks that I know cost him a fortune to ship. More than I expected, and surely they will be helpful! Thanks, Papa. Now I have to write a good novel.

I’ll begin that one in September. We’ll be back from vacation August 20th, and for a week Randi will work while I stay home and read books and books and books. A few days or a week of prewriting, and then it’s off again. Makes me think I should hurry up on Khatima revisions. This next novel will be about the disintegration of small-town America due to Cthulhoid monsters beaming dreams of terror and madness from their underground lairs, and the relocation of business and industry to the cities.

Read Carson McCuller’s Reflections in a Golden Eye last weekend. Like all of her stuff, it was polished, beautiful, horrible, wrenching, and a delight to read. What a writer! What a life. She attempted suicide, wrote a masterpiece, and suffered from multiple strokes - before the age of thirty. After The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, her output dwindled to a trickle for her remaining twenty-seven years - three short novels, a novella of surpassing excellence (”The Ballad of the Sad Cafe”) and a handful of short stories. But short and difficult though her life might have been, it was validated by the creation of Lonely Hunter, a work of such brilliance and sensitivity that it changed me at an age when I thought books no longer had that power. And she was twenty-three when she wrote it! Twenty-three!

Then I began Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. I knew the book was important, intelligent, excoriating, etc., but I never suspected that it be so dang entertaining. It’s a thick stew - a bouillabaisse, if you will -  of - of - many things. I’m not sure how to describe it. Rushdie wants to talk about the foundation of Islam, and problems with the textuality of the Koran, as well as modern India, and problems with faith and identity, but he also wants to talk about men magically transforming into satyrs. And here’s where I like to bite my thumb at Modern Literature (note the capitals): magic realism is the victory of genre fiction, you elitist jerks. This genre inhabited by prize-baiters like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges (whom I adore/venerate), Jose Saramago, Isabel Allende (a lot of Latins on this list, but that’s a subject for another post), Umberto Eco (for whom I have the utmost respect) - this genre which is the biggest thing in academia for a long time - and why? because it’s not boring and staid and done to death - this genre is the triump of fantasy fiction.

But it’s not fantasy, say the academics, their pince-nezes bouncing furiously on their reddening noses, it’s a metaphor.
Yes, of course. And what else would it be? What the hell is the point of any fantastic element in fantasy? It’s a metaphor. Hey, for that matter, what is the point of any character or object in any mainstream book? Metaphors. Symbols. That is how we tell stories. Do not malign a book because it includes rocket ships or monsters; they’re symbols. If you do so, then you disavow the power and utility of symbols, and thereby invalidate most of western literature. You morons. So I love magical realism. It’s fantasy, snuck onto the “general fiction” shelves and winning Nobel prizes. It’s one more barrier between scifi/fantasy and the mainstream struck down. Another barrier goes when Neil Gaiman wins the Newberry, when a Lord of the Rings movie grosses a million billion dollars. Genre fiction hasn’t been the exclusive province of nerds for a long time, and it’s time people recognized that.
I guess what I’m saying is I want people to study Gene Wolfe in college.

Posted in Anomalous, My Talented Friends, Reading | 1 Comment »

It’s been a while!

Christmas came and went. You may have detected its passage! This year I was fortunate to be home, with all my sisters and nephews and cousins and aunts and uncles present. My older sister gave me a box of business cards with the address for this page; I’d better make it professional tout de suite! My parents gave me The Ecclesiastical History of the English People by the Venerable Bede; I’m trying to read more primary historical texts, rather than secondary sources (that is, books from history rather than books about history). They also gave me Heinlein’s Job: A Comedy of Justice and Gene Wolfe’s Shadow and Claw, the first book of the New Sun cycle. I’m looking forward to that one. I got the second book some time ago, but haven’t read it yet, obviously.

My cousin, with whom I have a long-established birthday-and-Christmas book swap, gave me Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and an autographed copy of Neil Gaiman’s short story collection Fragile Things. Right inside the front cover: “To Jens - fragile wishes - Neil Gaiman.” We are now linked. In five years, I will encounter him at some scifi con, shake his hand, introduce myself, and he will say, “Yes, Jens, I remember.”
I’ve read about a hundred pages of the book. The stories are sometimes haunting, sometimes creepy, usually effective, and once or twice a bit dreary. So far they seem mostly to be ghost stories, which I wasn’t entirely expecting; one brilliant exception is A Study in Emerald (Hugo for best short story in 2004), a Sherlock Holmes-Lovecraft pastiche. You can read it in glorious illustrated format online.

I bought a few books for myself, as well: a number of Heinlein: The Cat Who Walked Through Walls, The Number of the Beast, Between Planets (a juvenile, finished this morning, good fun), Expanded Universe (short stories) and Grumbles from the Grave (letters); also Darwinia, by Robert Charles Wilson (Hugo for novel Spin); two by Tim Powers, Earthquake Weather and another that I can’t find right now; Ivanhoe; Old Man’s War and Ghost Brigade by John Scalzi (trying to read some still-living authors - hopefully, Mr. Scalzi will not be inexplicably marked for death once I begin his novels); Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles; Olympus, by Dan Simmons, the other 900 pages after Ilium, which I still haven’t read but look forward to; Memory and Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold; Little Sister by Raymond Chandler; some history: Medieval Soldier, Life in a Medieval Village, Records of the Crusades, Mystics of Islam, The Medieval Reader, Life in a Medieval Castle, and History of Western Philosophy, by Bertrand Russel. You may detect a them in my nonfiction selections.

Further gifts that I neglected to mention: How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays, wherein Umberto Eco reveals his unexpectedly hilarious side - from my wife; Amphigorey Again, from Ali, guaranteed to amuse and disturb; A Dirty Job, by Christopher Moore, from Kerry - already read it - amusing though rather do-nothing plot bolstered by good world-building, interesting, sympathetic characters and rapid-fire Bendis-style dialogue; Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray, from Joel. Whew! I wish I could find that other Tim Powers book…

I gave my cousin, in turn, Stranger in a Strange Land and Moby-Dick. We were in Half-Price, and I pointed out that august whaling epic and asked her opinion. “Never read it - looked like a dumb boy’s book.” And I silently vowed to inflict it upon her. It will make her wiser. I described Moby-Dick as the reason one learns to read; it is the wellspring of life; along with The Brothers Karamazov, one of the two pillars that prop up Western Civilization, our morning star and evening star, without which we would surely perish. Did humans survive before these books? Science says yes; aesthetics says no.

I’ve also got the few books that I brought along to read until I picked up more books: Frank Herbert’s The Godmakers (can you believe I’ve never read Herbert? Me neither!); Elmore Leonard’s Forty Lashes Less One, which will be my first exposure to the Detroit scribe; Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone. Looks fun.

I hope your Christmas was as merry as mine, and filled with more books than you can ever hope to read!

Posted in My Talented Friends, Reading | No Comments »

Erin Kinch has two stories up, at Mirror Dance and the Houston Literary Review - sounds important! I must commend Erin for pursuing publication so aggressively this year.

And, on a special celebratory note, fellow Wrinker Sandra Dias has published her very first piece, also in Mirror Dance. Read it!

Posted in My Talented Friends | 1 Comment »

First, head over to EDF for “Why Pews Don’t Come With Pistols,” by Talented Friend Stephanie Scarborough. It’s droll!

Second: the first round of Honorable Mentions for the Writers of the Future contest has been announced. My story “Crocodopolis” is not among them. That means it’s either headed for an Honorable Mention or - something greater. I’m collecting these Honorable Mentions like bobbleheads!

Third: Jordan Lapp, editor of EDF, won first place in last quarter’s WOTF. Wow. This is the most competitive contest in speculative fiction, and it’s amazing and awesome to place first. Congrats to him.

Fourth: I finished a Dixie O’Dell novella earlier this week. It’s merely okay. It needs work. I must get it polished before sending it to Space Westerns, my market of choice.

Fifth: I’m pre-writing a novella set in the Franco-Prussian War, specifically, the Siege of Paris. This was a fascinating conflict. I’m researching it by reading Alistair Horne’s The Terrible Year. The theme of my novella - and the war - is absurdity. I’m fortunate that the actual history provides so much fodder for this. For example, it’s the only war I can think of where hot-air balloons played a major role. How fortunate that the incompetence and occasional silliness of the French side, in the life-and-death context of brutal conflict, created a tragic absurdity that plays directly into the needs of this writer a century and a half later! When at last you enjoy the novella, reflect that only 250,000 men had to die for me to write it. Haha. I jest. The great thing about being a writer is picking over the bones of this senseless war (more senseless than most!) for scraps of sanity, and turning those scraps into meaning. For you, dear reader. The more prewriting I do, the better this story gets. I still have a lot of reading to go.

Sixth: Don’t forget to head to EDF on November 20th for my story “Ars Draconis”.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Stories, Writing | 2 Comments »

First, Talented Friend Erin Kinch is published over at “A Thousand Faces,” with glowing words from the editor. The story is “Bridge Club,” the quality of which I can attest.

Second, EDF has published their TOC for November; Stephanie Scarborough has a piece up November 5th, and my own “Ars Draconis” appears November 20th. I wrote that story while drinking tea and eating papayas on the balcony of our Ubud bungalow in Bali, listening to the rain pelt the banana leaves… so from this Indochine scene we have a tale of medieval Europe.

Third and final, EDF has released the TOC of their “Best of Year One” print antho, and my humble “Socks and Banshees” is on it, along with tales from all the WI crew: Alex, Erin, Stephanie. Hurrah!

Posted in My Talented Friends, Stories | 1 Comment »

Talented Friend Erin Kinch has a story up at EDF. Read it! Vote it!

Posted in My Talented Friends | 1 Comment »

Talented Friend Alex Burns has a story up at EDF!
Jens loves the title.

Posted in My Talented Friends | No Comments »

Erin Kinch recently completed her Masters in Fantastic Arcanum degree at the University of Nova Texas, granting her fourth-level telekinetic abilities. It is rumored that she has the power of the evil eye. Her stories appear on EDF, Allegory, and many other places. She maintains a scintillating blog.

Young Adult Fiction Isn’t Just for Young Adults Anymore

I used to skulk by the Y/A section, perusing the shelves surreptitiously, hoping no one noticed me loitering. At the cashier’s counter, I had a lie on the tip of my tongue (“They’re a birthday gift, I swear!”). After all, why would someone clearly in the adult age range be interested in reading about teen angst?

Now I know the truth—it’s not just me. A lot of adults like Y/A fiction. Good stories are good stories, no matter what shelf you find them on at the bookstore. I probably should have realized that earlier—I was never embarrassed about liking other genres (sci-fi, fantasy, romance). But I didn’t think of Y/A as its own genre—I thought it was a maturity marker that I was somehow failing.

Several things helped me slough off that Y/A embarrassment forever. One was a quote I read from my favorite Y/A author of all time, <a href=“http://www.tamora-pierce.com/” target=“_new”>Tamora Pierce</a>. I can’t remember the exact words (it’s been a while), but the gist was that she wanted adult readers to should stop apologizing for their age in fan mail, because she wrote her stories for anyone who wanted to read them. She loved to hear that her books appealed to different generations.

And then, the <i>Harry Potter</i> craze hit, and suddenly everyone was talking about “kid” books. At first it was just the youngsters of my acquaintance. I started to read the series so I could participate in their heated discussions, and soon I was hooked on the adventures of the young wizard. Soon, though, I noticed that I wasn’t the only adult reading it, and it wasn’t just parents wanting to read what their kids read, either. It was everybody!

The Y/A genre has exploded over the past few years. Now I read author blogs (like <a href=“http://jenlyn-b.livejournal.com/” target=“_new”>Jennifer Lynn Barnes</a>) and agent blogs (like <a href=“http://pubrants.blogspot.com/” target=“_new”>Pubrants</a>), and Y/A fiction is a huge discussion point. They enjoy reading Y/A (and not only the novels they write/represent), and they aren’t embarrassed to talk about it.

There is so much great Y/A fiction out there that it’s hard to know where to turn. When I was actually a teenager, we didn’t have anything that inspired the kind of devotion of <i>Harry Potter</i> or <i>Twilight</i>. Maybe part of that was the lack of Internet to help us with our fannish pursuits, but I think part of it was the stories, as well. <i>The Babysitter’s Club</i> and <i>Sweet Valley High</i> can’t hold a candle to Ann Brashares, Melissa Marr, Meg Cabot, Ally Carter, Michael Grant, and all the other great Y/A authors out there. Every time I go to the book store, there’s more to choose from!

But what is it, really, that makes Y/A fiction popular to adults as well as younger readers? I really can’t say for the world in general, but I have thought about why I like it so much. There is something magical about the idea of that time in everyone’s life, that time of youth and possibility. The big choices haven’t been made yet; the characters are only just discovering who they will become, so the possibilities are still wide open for them. I guess I’m just a sucker for the coming-of-age story. And there are those firsts that happen around that time that, once they’re over, never happen for the first time again. It’s powerful stuff. And, there’s also the fact that I write Y/A—all my attempted novels have been in that genre. So maybe it’s just a genre that resonates with me for whatever reason.

It’s probably long past time for me to wind up this entry, so I’ll leave you with one last thing—a list of some of my favorite Y/A novels. If you’ve never read Y/A before, but now find yourself intrigued, one of these novels might be a good starting point (there are tons more I could list, of course, but these few are at the top of my list):

<ul><li><i>The Song of the Lioness</i> quartet by Tamora Pierce—When her gender disqualifies her from fulfilling her dream of knighthood, Alanna takes things into her own hands.</li>

<li>The <i>Harry Potter</i> series by J.K. Rowling—Unknown to Harry until his 11^th birthday, he is the most famous wizard in the wizarding world, and he has a destiny to live up to in the battle against the most powerful dark wizard of the age.</li>

<li>The <i>Twilight</i> series by Stephanie Meyer—a new interpretation of vampires. Though, really, my favorite Meyer book is <i>The Host</i>. It’s technically adult, but it’s written in the same style. The only difference is the age of the protagonist, but Wanderer, in <i>The Host</i>, is coming of age just like Bella in <i>Twilight</i>—it’s just that Wanderer happens to be an alien!</li>

<li>/The <i>Peaches</i> series by Jodi Lynn Anderson—three very different girls, brought together by a peach orchard, discover that life has more twists and turns than they thought.</li>

<li>The Tillerman books, starting with <i>Homecoming</i>, by Cynthia Voigt—Four kids, abandoned by their mother, journey cross-country to find their grandmother.</li></ul>

Posted in My Talented Friends | 2 Comments »

Today’s guest columnist is Alex Burns. Alex was first spotted in New York’s Catskill Mountains, feeding on a possum; he resurfaced in Vienna in the latter part of that century, possibly in the service of the Queen of Aragon, only to vanish again after what onlookers described as “a frightful row”. His recent works appear in AThousand Faces and Everyday Fiction. He maintains the erudite blog Meanwhile… I agree wholeheartedly with everything he says. - Jens

Addendum: You know what I hate? Art Spiegelman, the deeply talented author of “Maus” always refers to the medium as “comix”. That drives me insane.

On to the column!

I Refuse to Title with Onomatopoeia

[Also, anyone using “Holy (Noun), Batman!” as a headline will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. I’m looking at you, Entertainment Weekly.]

Sequential storytelling, as the late great Will Eisner referred to the medium, has come a long way in the past ten or so years. The audience has aged with the form, and as a result comics have grown more experimental and mature. I would venture to say that there are more talented writers and artists working in comics today than ever before. It’s a renaissance.

Sadly, however, the sales figures have not grown. It’s not unexpected – reading in general isn’t exactly the world’s favorite past time, and that makes comics a niche of a niche, hardly a favorable position for any industry.

So, as the resident comic book guy, I felt compelled to flavor Jens’s blog with a little list of recommended comic books and graphic novels. I’ll skip over the old obvious masterpieces, like Watchmen, Maus, or The Dark Knight Returns, and present a variety of newer material that’s come out more recently, stuff that hasn’t had a chance to make it into college classrooms yet. (Sandman, Sin City, and Hellboy should be old news as well, unless I’m more out of touch than I thought.) I’ll give a wide range of genres – it’s not all capes out there.

Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Oeming. Bendis has done a lot of great work, but this is really the stand-out. Powers is about two police detectives, Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim, who specialize in metahuman homicide. Whenever someone has been murdered by a supervillain, or a superhero turns up dead, they get the call. It’s an unconventional comic; not just a crime series, but a procedural police drama. Imagine Zodiac but with super powers. Snappy dialogue, experimental panel layout, and a complex interwoven plot make it well worth the investment.

Y: The Last Man, by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. I hesitate to include this, as it feels like it’s become as famous as some of the classics I already mentioned. But I’d feel remiss in not mentioning this 60-issue (conveniently divided into 10 easy-to-find trade paperbacks) epic set in a near future in which every mammal on the planet with a Y chromosome has suddenly perished. All but two, rather: Yorick Brown and his helper monkey, Ampersand. Yorick and his allies embark on quests to discover why all the men died, what can possibly be done to save humanity, find Yorick’s lost girlfriend, and simply survive in a civilization struggling to rebuild itself. Really, though, if telling you there’s a monkey named Ampersand doesn’t get your attention, I’m not sure I can help you.

DMZ, by Brian Wood. Another series set in the near future, DMZ takes place in an America wracked by civil war. Rookie photojournalist Matthew Roth takes us into Manhattan Island, which has become a demilitarized zone between the shattered US and Free States armies. It’s got all the gritty realism you’d expect from that premise, and a healthy dose of biting social and political commentary.

Scalped, by Jason Aaron. American Indian Dashiell Bad Horse returns to his home reservation as an FBI agent sent to expose and arrest the local kingpin of crime. Dashiell’s history and old relationships tear at his loyalties. Complex character studies are set against a backdrop of an absolutely seedy run-down shit-hole of a reservation. The only thing sadder than the fates of some of Dashiell’s acquaintances is that the conditions on the reservation aren’t particularly fictional. An extremely dense, dark read.

Persepolis (Volumes I and II), by Marjane Satrapi. An autobiographical comic, Satrapi’s life is remarkable in that she grew up in Iran amongst the tumultuous revolutions of the 1970s. Satrapi, who attended French schools and periodically spent time in Austria and France, straddles the borders and presents a fascinating view of her country as it descends into fundamentalism and fascism. There’s also an excellent film adaptation, if you like your pictures in the moving variety.

American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang. American Born Chinese is constructed as three stories: one of a young Asian American kid struggling to fit in at a largely white school in California; another sitcom-style tale of a teen ashamed of a visiting Chinese cousin who embodies every terrible Asian stereotype imaginable; and a third detailing a Chinese folk story about the Monkey King fighting to earn the respect of his fellow gods. You’re probably noticing some thematic parallels between the three stories, and it works very well. Yang successfully intertwines the three stories together into a single plot by the end of the book, and the result is quite emotionally satisfying.

I could go on (oh, oh, Gotham Central! Walking Dead! Astro City!), but I’ll stop before Jens herds me, tarred and feathered, toward the harbor. I’ve been watching a lot of John Adams lately.

Many of these are likely available at local libraries. Give them a chance, and they may surprise you.

Posted in My Talented Friends | 3 Comments »

Stephanie Scarborough’s short-short “Naked Confusion” is up at the Cynic Online. Featuring imaginary nudity!

Posted in My Talented Friends | 1 Comment »

My cousin, Cindi Reed, just snatched her Master’s Degree from the talons of the University, and, suddenly free after all these years, she has launched herself at writing. And who could ever hope to be a writer without a snazzy webpage? Visit hers here. Cindi is no novice at writing, either; she enjoyed a successful editorship at youth-and-beauty temple 944 Magazine, sharpening her skills to a killing edge. We expect great things from her!

Posted in My Talented Friends | No Comments »

How negligent of me! Talented Friend Erin Kinch was published over at Electric Spec a few days ago, and I totally forgot to inform that small section of the world that reads my blog but not hers. Well, this is for you, guys! Read her story.

Posted in My Talented Friends | 1 Comment »

Papillion: 48,000!

I bet you want to talk about something else now.
Flash fiction, then!
I think my initial problem with “flash fiction” was the nomenclature. It gave me the idea of writing stories in an impromptu fashion, with no preparation and no polishing. Why would you do that? Why would we have markets specifically for that?
(Of course, I later identified this as a misconception.)
I was fine with simply writing very short stories, though I preferred to call them “short-shorts”. This also makes one think of Daisy Dukes, which are sexy and fashionable, as well as the timeless pop song regarding the wearing of short-shorts, and the participants in this activity. More importantly, it gives the impression that so-called “flash” pieces are just very short stories, given the same thought and meticulousness as any other work, regardless of their length.
More troubling, though, was the existence of “flash authors”. You sometimes encounter them on the Internet. They are difficult to recognize in real life. I wondered, what sort of author would work solely on stories under a thousand words? What kind of madman limits his artistic growth so?
Answer: I don’t know, but I don’t really think of it that much.
Now I have come to value “flash fiction,” though I still prefer my term of “short-shorts”. “Flash fiction,” or simply “flash,” as it’s known on the streets, is edifying as a writing exercise. Furthermore, story ideas too gimmicky or half-baked to work as a long piece can be quite successful in five-minute form. The brevity of “flash” is also very convenient to a modern audience with the attention span of a rabid African white-toothed shrew. Every Day Fiction knows this, and succeeds accordingly. And amazingly.
All this is to say that I can’t wait to start posting my weekly short-shorts on the website. Katie McCullough is putting together some grand art for them. You’ll love them.
But let’s not call them “flash”.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Papillon, Writing | 2 Comments »

Today I summoned the above-mentioned powers and plowed through my quota. After a thousand-word shortfall yesterday, I had a bit of doing before me! And I did it!

So now it’s at 46,500 words. 48,000 tomorrow. 51,000 on Saturday. Wow!

Today I wrote two sentences of which I am very proud:

“Her bony hips were as inviting as the pincers of a giant crab.”

“Rats surfaced and dove among the corpses like fish playing in the surf.”

Today’s installment also features an appearance by the Wandering Jew.

In other news, many of my Talented Friends are endeavoring to write a story every day for the next two weeks. What an undertaking! I wish I could join, and would, if not for this novel. But encouragement is due them. Join your plaudits with mine!

Posted in My Talented Friends, Papillon | No Comments »

Talented Friend Erin Kinch has sold her piece “The Dragon Thief” to Static Movement; it’s online now! This zine, you may recall, is renowned for its excellent taste.

Papillion’s at 37,500 words; I have a three-day weekend, so I don’t see why it couldn’t hit 90k by Monday!
Just kidding. I’m shooting for 42,000.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Papillon | 1 Comment »

Work on the novel continues apace - etc. Up to 36,000 words, which means I’m back on schedule. Like a champ!

Papillion has become squire to the great Sir Figaro, and they’ve gone to the annual tournament in the Bois D’Ouest. There he meets an old enemy and participates in a general melee, winning much honor for Volumnia, his lady love.

I’ve actually written the chapter after this scene, where Figaro and Papillion fight the dragon that’s been terrorizing France. After I finished that passage, I decided to insert the tournament, to give Papillion a glimpse of the finer side of chivalric life, before plunging him into a holocaust of horror. Again.

The dragon lairs near the alpine city of Channecy, which the astute French geographer may note does not exist. My book may therefore draw some criticisms for inaccuracy. I would also submit that the book contains a dragon.

In other news, Talented Friend Erin Kinch has gained acceptance at the august journal “A Thousand Faces” for her piece, “Bridge Club,” just like I knew she would. It’s a solid piece and perfect for the market, which is renowned for its exceptional taste.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Papillon | No Comments »

Stephanie Scarborough’s “Visions of Hummis-cide” is up at Bewildering Stories! It’s worth the three minutes it’d take you to read it!

Posted in My Talented Friends | No Comments »

Alex’s 1000-word mystery, “Aftershocks,” is up at world-conquering flash fiction page, Every Day Fiction. Read it! It’ll take you ten minutes. This is my favorite of all of Alex’s short-shorts. (That hyphen is important. I am not talking about Alex’s hot pants.)

Posted in My Talented Friends | 2 Comments »

Papillion” hit 18,000 words today. Score!

I spent some time catching up on critiques for my good ol’ writing group. Critiquing, the jolly dissection of someone else’s hard work, is an educational experience. Reading unrevised works with an especially critical eye, you detect weaknesses of prose, structure, or storytelling that would be weeded from a more polished story. (Please note that my writing group produces stories of uncommonly high caliber. All values of quality in this blog post are relative!) In so detecting, you learn to avoid these errors in your own works. Or, you might learn from something that your friend did right, something you wish you did, and you quietly steal that something and wait for an opportunity to bring it back in another form. Hee hee.

And I want to tell you of one of the stories I read. It’s called “Bridge Club,” by Erin, and it’s hilarious and subtle and joyful to read. I wish I had written it. I’m sure I’ll be able to link to it sometime soon.

Posted in My Talented Friends, Papillon, Writing | 1 Comment »