The unpleasantness of going to the immigration office today, dealing with a staff that cannot speak English — I think it’s silly to demand that in coffeeshops and restaurants but good grief, a basically monolingual staff in an immigration office? — and of course the long wait, sitting beside people who seem to think nothing of playing video games on their phones at full blast, regardless of whether the repeated bleeping noise might, you know, annoy others or not. Along with discovering that my phone, miraculously fixed, is probably unmiraculously note quite fixed at all (it shuts itself off, still, …
Category: WRITING
A Game For the Patient
I have a story I sent to a magazine at the end of September. I got an email in late October saying there was a hold on it, as it was promising and was being put on a shortlist for consideration. I got an email today saying that the shortlists have been finalized, and that my story’s still on the shortlist. The email said they were hoping to have a decision on everything by the end of the year… hoping, but no guarantees. And I’m not complaining. There are faster markets, but most of them aren’t. Slush piles are just, …
Ogallala down, A Killing In Burma is (though at a slower pace) next…
Whew. Well, I had planned on 5000 words, but produced roughly 7000, with almost 5000 of them being produced, painstakingly, today, so those paying attention can see another red bar in my Projects section over in the sidebar. Not without a great loss of time in all kinds of research. I know lots of stuff about pack ice, about thermohaline circulation, about underwater detonation of nuclear explosives, and shock propagation through water (and its effects on ice). Not enugh for everything to be really realistic, but then, I’m not sure anyone knows what would happen in a scenario like the …
The Other Projects in My Folders…
My last post was about stories being tracked in my sidebar. But I have folders full of other stuff. Those other projects in my drafts box, I thought I’d mention just to keep myself honest, and to amuse those curious about what kinds of things I’m writing about. 4. Refugees (short story): A spooky response to the Fermi Paradox that starts with a sudden reception of a signal from a civilization about 1000 light years away, and gets compounded by the sudden, highly-visible, and (relatively) slow front of a wave of interstellar refugees through close visible space. 5. AI Ghost …
The Mouldering Projects
I keep a couple of project bars open on my sidebar to keep myself humble, but it’s been a few months for some of them, and the stories are still in draft mode. I thought I’d write notes on a couple of them, if for no other purpose than to roll them around in my head the way one mulls some homemade wine to decide whether it’s decent or swill. 1. The Egan Thief: This story concept is actually inspired by a true story, which I related to my classmates at Clarion West. I was working on the first novel …
Triangle Man
Whilst brushing my teeth tonight, the name of a jazz CD I’ve never heard ran through my head. It was called Triangle Man, by John Stetch, a pianist I saw live in Saskatoon probably 12 or 14 years ago. (He had Mike Murley with him, and it was the first time I heard Murley playing anything besides with the Shuffle Demons, and I was impressed.) Anyway, a bizarre little story–something a bit Poe-like, actually, except, well, weirder–began to take shape in my head, and now, 45 minutes later, I have a 1600-ish-word story which probably could do with a little …
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 …
Dowland’s Death?
How the heck did John Dowland actually die? Does anyone out there in Internet-land know? I can’t find a snip of data on the web — and I spent an hour googling around for the info. The best I can find is the Dowland expert Diana Poulton suggesting he took ill in January 1626 and probably didn’t die until closer to the date of his burial in February 1626. The fact I am writing something (very vaguely) about Dowland should not surprise anyone looking in the sidebar. Though I hadn’t recalled Philip K. Dick being a fan, it makes sense, …
Hyu! Shoopahs (Mostly) Down, and A Killing In Burma is Next
Whew. I just finished drafting the story under the working title, “How Jjangguk Took Down Kim Noh Wang (The Madman of Pyongyang)”. I’ll be doing some tidying and editing sometime this and perhaps tomorrow morning evening , and then soliciting comments soon after, not just from my regular crit group but others who’re willing to give feedback on more Korean- and Asian-political matters that are semi-allegorized in the story. It’s 95 pages long, double-spaced, which is pretty much the longest single fiction story I’ve written this far, aside from a few drafted novels. Certainly it’s the most coherent long piece …
Write-In Update
This is an update on the Write-In post I made last night. As of 4:30pm on Sunday, I am now at 11,800 words. Of course, this is redrafting, so it’s going more quickly than original drafting. Still, the amount of complicated reworking and rethinking has my brain in knots. Lots of going for short walks and thinking things over today… but it is coming along. It might be optimistic to think I can finish this off tonight, though, considering I need to get my passport application and laundry done as well… UPDATE 2 (2pm, Monday Oct. 23): Well, I’m now …