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Ogallala

Those of you paying attention to my progress bar might note a new project, in addition to all those that have been sitting almost-inert for weeks now. It’s titled “Ogallala”, and it’s a short story that I’m writing specifically to submit to the next edition of Tesseracts, which is being edited by Cory Doctorow and Holly Phillips this time around. I know there are better-paying markets, but I would just be happy to get onto a masthead with Cory, whose work I very much enjoy and respect, and it’d be cool to end up in a Canadian anthology.

(No diss to Holly, I’ve just never read her stuff.)

Now, I very often write stuff that’s way too long for this kind of anthology (or most markets), so I’ve given myself a few goals for this story:

Once I finish this and send it off in search of criticisms, I’ll probably return to revising something else… maybe my superheroes-in-Northeast-Asia story, or maybe that long-awaited revision of the ghost story I set in Korea, “Comfort Woman”. The Tesseracts deadline is six weeks away, so I can afford to get some feedback before sending it out.

UPDATE (6:30pm): At the end of today’s drafting session, I’m at roughly 1400 words. I’m hoping to have this baby out by the end of the weekend, which is totally doable. Got about 80% of the remaining story in my head, it’s only thr very ending I need to get clear, but already, a number of sudden mistypes and sudden thoughts have changed the direction of the story in fascinating and somewhat (to me) disturbing ways. Am excited, especially to be working on something so short, yet having it actually work at this length. That’s Very Cool.

UPDATE (1:30pm next day): I won’t be getting much done today, as I have an appointment in Seoul this afternoon with an ex-student and old friend, but hunks more of the story are coming clear, and I think I have about 95% of what’s going to happen in my head. A horrible working title I would have happened upon at this point, if the story weren’t already titled “Ogallala”, is “Benito Pykreteno“. And I’m considering renaming Captain Lavalée as Captain Deslaineaux, just for the gaggy reference.

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