association-list

I am twenty-​​nine today.

Whee.

So, not dead, just busy. In lieu of pro­vid­ing an update on things that I’ve been read­ing recently, as is tra­di­tional, I’ll gloss over that and give a detailed update on things that I’ve been writ­ing. The read­ing is not going so well, due to busy­ness and the lack of notable books pub­lished over the winter season. I’ll update even­tu­ally, but it’s more likely to happen once I’ve gotten through a few recently acquired books. Mostly, I’ve been chew­ing my way through short story col­lec­tions, which I find hard to com­ment upon cogently. Mostly, talk­ing about them ends up as snarky attacks on the taste of the editor, which is some­thing that I’d rather avoid (not that that pref­er­ence is some­thing that has stopped me much prior to this).

Anyway:

Novel in progress:

Track­ing spread­sheet is here. Feel free to heckle and prod if you see the num­bers start­ing to slip. Note that the title is going to go. I really love the quote, but it doesn’t fit the book. Haven’t thought of any­thing better yet, however.

Short sto­ries:

There are a couple, and, because I am a slacker, none have been sent out yet. Three of them tie in with the novel.

Mage-​​get.

The first tie in, detail­ing some inter­est­ing events in the his­tory of two of the pri­mary char­ac­ters. The clos­est to being sent out, it just wants one or two more seri­ous revi­sions, which I promise I’ll get around to soon.

Cast up by the sea.

Second tie in, more his­tory and some hints as to what, exactly, is really going on. This needs some seri­ous revi­sion, to the point that I’m hes­i­tat­ing to even call it done. No idea when I’ll be done with it.

Untitled/​The Screw.

The third, and the most dif­fi­cult of the three. I’m hap­pier with it, struc­turally, than Cast up, but it’s miss­ing some­thing that I can’t quite put my finger on, and will stay around here until I get that worked out.

MTBF

SF story that I’m pretty happy with. I lost a draft that I really liked, and am going to have to try again. It lacks a real ending, but fairly well cap­tures what I was going for. It’s been shelved for quite a while now, so I really should pick it up again.

Leave Home

This is an ancient post-​​singularity story, and I’m not quite sure that it’s worth the rework. Will have to steel myself one of these week­ends and give it a better read through, rather than gasp­ing in dis­taste at the first couple of lines and clos­ing the file. If noth­ing else, there are some inter­est­ing bits of color from my time in Brno that might be reusable elsewhere.