Author: Sharon

Steve has written here about our intentions and upcoming goodies for Splinter Universe.

For today’s goodies, we have an intro to “Code of Honor,” here.

The story itself is here.

And, if you haven’t read Alma Alexander’s Guest Story, “Leaving Via Callia,” here’s the link.

Read, enjoy; send the link to your friends so that they can read and enjoy, too!

 

. . .we now return you to your Regularly Scheduled Monday.

#SFWAPro

There are a couple of announcements before we get May Day underway.

First, there’s a brand-new, never-before-published Guest Story at Splinter Universe:  “Leaving Via Callia” by Alma Alexander.  Here’s your link to the story.  Please note:  The donation button at the bottom of the story goes directly to the author’s PayPal account.  If you want to show your appreciation for her work by donating, make sure you use that button.

Second Announcement:  Baen Books is proud to announce the inaugural Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, to be given at this year’s Gen Con to the best piece of original short fiction that captures the spirit and tradition of such great storytellers as Larry Correia, Robert E. Howard, Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Moon, Andre Norton, J.R.R. Tolkien, David Weber and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

You can get more information, including deadline for submissions, by clicking this link.  The award will be given at GenCon

In Cat Farm and Confusion Factory news:

Steve has an appointment with the vampires today; I have an appointment with the Road Boss on Surebleak.

Sprite has decided to become Vastly Silly, and be Afraid of her string.  This is at once amusing and frustrating, since, before yesterday, her string was her Treasure, her Precious, the Best. Toy. Ever.  I don’t know what it did to her when I wasn’t looking, but when I pick up the string to play with it, she runs and “hides” on the top cellar stair.  I do realize that she’s only 21 months old, and the Silly Goo hasn’t completely left her system, but I hope this phase passes quickly.

Also, she now occasionally answers to “Boopsie.”  Guess I better cut back. . .  OTOH, we do like them to answer to something.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print from Central Maine, where it’s raining very gently.

All you folks who got Weather yesterday (including my friends in Maryland, who lost part of 26th Street in Charles Village to a massive sinkhole/landslide.  The pictures I saw showed a street-full of cars down on the railroad tracks.  I hope CSX has another way outta town, ’cause it didn’t look like that was going to get cleared out soon.) — how’re you doing?  Safe and dry?

* * *

Progress on One of Five
58,701/100,000
OR
59% completed

He shook his head. “Who names a planet Surebleak?”
She laughed.
“It was descriptive, surely?”
“Oh, surely; and still is. Until Mr. Brunner gets those weather satellites up and tuned, and even then, I fear we’ll only have graduated to Halfbleak.”

In what may be the fastest flip in my own personal history, yesterday I wrote a story.

No, actually, that’s not true.

On. . .what was yesterday, Tuesday?

Right.

So. . .On Sunday, a story idea surfaced; nothing particularly new; I’d been meaning to get to a story kinda, sorta like it for a while now, but. . .press of other bidness, plus — no brain.  This time surfacing, the idea had more grit to it, which they do accumulate down there in writer’s stewpot.  I talked the new wrinkles over with Steve, and we brainstormed a little, mostly around the idea of how a certain thing could come into the hands of the main character — in fact, would it come into the hands of the main character — and in the course of that discussion, Steve came up with the shadow of a new character.  We proceeded to kick the new character around some, as we do; then went to bed.

At this point, I was still intending to write the story that had surfaced, oh, sometime in the next week.  Maybe working on the story in the morning, and the book in the evening.

But! On. . .Monday, it would be, as I was running errands, I bethought myself that the new character had quite the story, and! that this story and the surfaced story and, possibly, one more story that’s still hanging around at the edge of things, pretending like it doesn’t really want to be written, all hook together.  So, now instead of one story that I’m gonna get to realsoonnow, I have a triptych, the first section of which wants to be written right now.

After I’d finished up with the scene for the novel that I’d been working on, I outlined the first short story — thinking to buy some time, see?  Sometimes, if you give them an outline, they’ll hold off with the write me now!

Well, I found out that wasn’t going to work when, immediately upon finishing the outline, I opened a file and wrote the first 830 words.

And, yesterday, I wrote the other 5,167, which brings the entire first draft in at just a smidge under 6,000 words.

This is not a personal best, that remains the day I sat down and typed 25 pages — call it 6,250 words — of Agent of Change at one go.  Still, for me, it’s pretty quick.

So!  What happens now with the story is that it gets to rest until Saturday, when I’ll give it a cold read and  in the process find out what it’s about.  Steve and I will talk about it, and one of us will doubtless revise it.  Eventually — next week, or the week after — it will appear on Splinter Universe.

And this, boys and girls, is how stories are made.

Sometimes.

When you’re lucky.