new stories for old

Lots of good news on the literary front.

I heard that my publisher has been advised by her readers to accept not only my latest novel, St. Martin's Moon, but also two of my short stories, 'Ex Libris', written for last year's PARSEC contest and originally published in Triangulations: Taking Flight, and a new story written for this year's PARSEC contest which wasn't considered good enough. The contest word limit was 3500 words and my stories usually take longer than that to tell. The book's word limit is larger but I have trouble writing multiple versions of the same story. Next year's story theme is the Color of Silence. As my daughter pointed out, Silence is Golden, but I think they'll expect something rather more original than that.

I spent the better part of this weekend finishing up the largest part of my current WIP short story, a comedy sequel to 'Chasing His Own Tale', originally published as part of the Wyrd Wravings anthology, which will itself be re-released as a standalone story eventually. I know they have the cover art. They sent me theirs and I sent them mine. Anyway, 'Chasing His Own Tale 2', once titled The Inevitable Sequel but now titled Struck By Inspiration, has had the first layer completed, the dialog. I tend to write my stories dialog first. Many times I do a whole scene and realize that everything is dialog, not a thing about actions or what the characters are doing otherwise, where they are, or anything. I go back and add all that stuff after the fact, and that is what I expect to be doing in the near future: filling in the little actions as the characters engage in witty banter and do strange things.

I just noticed, I have 7 followers. Seven! This is fantastic. I figure at this rate, I'll be the most popular author on Earth when the Sun expands into a red dwarf and consumes the planet. You know what they say, 'slow and steady wins the race.'