Aug 26, 2015

THE WRITING CONTINUES, PART 1

Organizing this campaign takes a lot of my time and brainspace, so I have had to cut back a bit on what my life is really all about: the writing. To use the obvious example: I had gotten about 63,000 words into my next novel when I signed on for this. That has ground to a halt. (It’s not necessarily a bad thing, though: I had been on a tear over the previous month, going from 26,000 words, and perhaps I needed a break. When this is over, I’ll be able to get back to the novel afresh, sprinting down the home stretch towards my 80,000 word target.)

Nonetheless, the writing goes on outside this campaign. For one thing, there is the Insatiable Maw that is my Web site, Les Pages aux Folles (http://www.lespagesauxfolles), which must be fed every week. (I’ll have more to say about that next week.)

Then, there is the business of being a writer. Last week, I submitted a short story called The Stupefying Snailman, Gastropod of Justice Versus The Disease That Steals the Soul to a new British speculative fiction magazine called The Singularity. The story is a parody of superhero comics, of course, and I hope readers will find it hilarious, but it has a serious theme: the main character has Alzheimer’s Disease. My grandfather died of Alzheimer’s, and, as I get older, I have to wonder if my own memory lapses are just a symptom of passing time or early signs that I, too, have the disease. This story gave me the opportunity to explore how the disease affects people.

The story was accepted in less than an hour, the contract signed a couple of minutes later. I have never had an acceptance happen that quickly; I didn’t think it was physically possible given the physics of this universe. The story will appear in the second issue of The Singularity, roughly three months from now.

Sometimes, a good guy wins one. :-)

PS: Major props to Liz Hurst, the publisher at Pop Seagull Press (https://popseagullpublishing.wordpress.com/), for ordering a couple copies of Both Sides. NOW! yesterday. Check them out; they have published some killer spec fic anthologies (and, I’m not just saying that just because I have stories in them :-). You may not have heard of Pop Seagull, but give them a couple of years and they’ll be making some big noise, so you owe it to yourself to be one of the first people on your street to support them. Who doesn't love being able to say, "I knew them before they were big?"