My writing bits and pieces

Going to Conflux 9 did a number of things for me, one of which was to get me thinking about the state of my writing. It’s kind of in bits and pieces, but in a good way. Here are some of the bits:

Bit one: I’ve got another story accepted for publication. It’s a little story called ‘mouse’ and it will be

appearing in issue 181 the webzine AntipodeanSF (out in July). It’s a very short story, less than 100 words,most likely the shortest story I’ll ever write. My wife Jane, and her reaction to mice, was the inspiration for the story.

Bit two: Radar Love is in its second stage and will be that way for about a month, look out for an update in June. The stages of my plan for this Steampunk romance are in an earlier post. A workshop at Conflux showed me a whole new level of story self-editing. I always love more work.L

Bit Three: My first novel (in progress) has the working title of ‘Lonely Susan’. This started out as a short story that just grew into something bigger. Lonely Susan really worked as the name for the short story, but for the longer version it’s not feeling right.
The protagonist, Susan, is a person who finds herself kind of lost in time. She left earth in the late 21st century on a sleeper ship out to colonise a distant planet. However, she wakes up more than two thousand years after the colony is established, and things are not what she expected. I’m going to blog some more about the novel in the future. One of the things I learnt I need at Conflux is a one sentence statement that sums up the book. I’ll be getting into that at some point. Right now I’m into the tenth chapter with maybe between thirty or forty to go. I always love more work.L