NaNoWriMo 2013

Posted on by wren

A winner is me: my extremely lumpy, extremely jumbled draftbeast, which lurches along under the title Salvaging Angels, weighed in this afternoon at a robust 55,692 words. A majority of them are the wrong words, or go haring off in strange directions, but that’s all right, that’s what NaNoWriMo is for, and I’m sure they can be coaxed into shape if I decide to make something serious of them. Which I might; I don’t usually write science fiction, and it’s been fun. Though I confess in this very rough draft a liberal arts major’s sad tendency to invent future technologies by tacking the word space as a prefix onto current technologies. (E.g., spacetoaster.)

As Mishell and I have been known to tell one another: “Forget it, Jake; it’s alpha draft.”

I’ve excerpted part of the beginning below, for your enjoyment or chagrin or incredulous mockery.

Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2013

Works in Progress

Posted on by wren

For the curious.

My story that ran in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, “The Red Cord,” is set in a place called the Marethi Ordinary. Or just the Ordinary, to its inhabitants. The Ordinary is also the setting for my novel-in-progress, whose working title has changed only approximately seventeen times in the last two years. Right now we’re calling it Ash. Or Malice. No, probably Ash. It doesn’t matter, it will be something else eventually. Mostly it’s The Goddamned Novel.

I’m also currently working on two short stories set in that same world, plus short stories about:

  • Malevolent angels
  • Monstrous mermaids
  • Carnivorous unicorns
  • Imaginary wolves

(Those are each the subject of a separate story. I have not figured out how to get all of those things into one story, though I bet it would be a hell of a story.)

I’ve also been working on a novel collaboration with Mishell Baker, called The Widow’s Wolf. We completed an alpha draft over the summer that comes in a little above 110,000 words. We began the process of beta revision and then tabled it for a research and rumination break.

And then I decided to try something completely new for NaNoWriMo this year and started writing a space horror thing that has turned into a space … I’m-not-quite-sure-anymore. A Space Oddity.

I am very, very bad at doing one thing at a time.

The Welcome Mat

Posted on by wren

This site has lain fallow for a little while, since in a housekeeping frenzy earlier this year I took everything down, intending to revamp the place, and then did what I always do halfway through anything housekeeping-related: I wandered off distracted.

My story “The First Stone” was emailed today to Daily Science Fiction subscribers, though, and I notice that company is beginning to turn up here and peer in the windows, so I should probably put on some coffee and look hospitable, if not immaculate.

Hello, hi. Thanks for stopping by.