August Writing Update
August has been a highly productive month in the writing department (less so in the reading department):
- It Shines Bright Tonight. My sword-and-sorcery/Lovecraftian Elephant Seal novelette ended up as 13,000 words (up from 8,000 at the start of the month). That’s 65 pages in Standard Manuscript Format – sticking the indents in manually (curse you, LibreOffice) took forever. It’s now at submission level.
- An Extract from the Diary of Peter Mackenzie. 1900 words. A taniwha meets railway nerdism, which might well take the cake for obscure subject matter. Seriously: the story is a fantasy explanation for why the Kurow Branch of the New Zealand Railways never went beyond Hakataramea (the Branch closed in 1983). The piece is also at submission level – in fact, it actually got into the second round at Clarkesworld before getting rejected, something that made me very excited.
- The Mystery of the Nineteen Bells. 850 words. A strange little side project that came out of nowhere, on campanology and trying to find meaning. Basically finished, but needs some polish.
- Black Nykövä. This is intended as an independent story set in the Wise Phuul universe, and is a piece I am having to take slowly, since the narrator has a decidedly purple and poetic turn of phrase (think Dylan Thomas) – it is very easy to mess up something like that. Note that I didn’t intend the narrator to be that way; it’s just that I am a discovery writer, rather than a planner (or what George R.R. Martin calls a gardener, rather than an architect) – so I find stuff out as I go along.
A Phuulish Fellow 