missed deadline

There was a contest that ended 4/15. A short story on a theme, 3500 words. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Well…

I usually do well with themes. All of my short stories grew out of some kind of theme. Chasing His Own Tale was supposed to be humorous and SF/F. Okay, not much as themes go, but it was

Buy it now, you know you want to.

my first one and I like to think I rose to the challenge. Speaking of challenges, one of the few fruits of my painful attempts to describe my latest novel (St. Martin’s Moon, I talk a lot about it over here) is that I got a great new short story out of it, called…wait for it…Chasing His Own Tale 2! Clever, no?

No?

Actually it’s called Struck by Inspiration. It was called The Inevitable Sequel but like everything else this title just popped up out of the blue and smacked me.

That same year (the CHOT year, not the CHOT2 year) I discovered the PARSEC contest, the same one that just ended for the year today. That first time around the theme was Hard Port, and I ended up writing my Cyber-piracy story, Boys Will Be Boys.

Buy it now, you--wait, I said that already.

I think I’ve talked about this one before though, and you know how I feel about repeating myself. The PARSEC contest comes up with some wierd themes. The year after Hard Port it was Instruments of Madness. I actually had an idea about three people each of whom uses an ‘instrument of madness’ in some interpretation, against one of the others. One of these days.

My story Ex Libris came out of a PARSEC contest (‘Metallic Feathers’), as did Undermind (‘Dark Glass’), which has not yet been published anywhere. The Dark Glass theme actually gave me several ideas. One of these days.

This year’s theme was The Color of Silence, kind of an odd choice. I thought of a planet called Silence, a sword called Silence, and even a newly dead spirit, composing Haikus about the glories of Heaven, cast in colors of silence or some such. Souls unfurled like wings. In fact, the sword called Silence is a central prop in my new short story, Chasing His Own Tale 3: Have At Thee, Knaves!

I do well with themes. Too well. I get so many ideas I can’t get them all down. It’s a problem to have.