Proving once again that I’m not much of a blogger, I’ve gone too long without an update. Part of this is due to the state of my life right now — when you have a day job, two young children, all the fun stuff that makes life interesting, and the writing on top of it, it makes finding time for anything not considered Top Priority pretty tough — but it’s also because there really hasn’t been much to report. This isn’t to say I haven’t been busy. But as I’ve shifted more of my time from short stories to novels (and if you want to eventually make a living as a writer, you pretty much have no choice), there’s obviously going to be less newsworthy activity. The novels are longer, so you write fewer of them a year, hence marketing fewer of them, which means there’s less news. Of course, I hope that once I start sellling them, the news is correspondingly bigger, but we’ll have to forge that particular river when we get to it.
That said, I happily note that I’ve finished a new novel. I also finished a novella in the last few months, and that’s now out on an editor’s desk. And my story, “The World in Primary Colors,” just hit the stands in the September issue of Ellery Queen. I don’t want to give anything away, but this is one of those rare stories where the whole thing came to me all at once, as I was helping my (at the time) two-year-old daughter navigate one of those tunnel-like play structures you sometimes find at fast food joints. Often ideas need molding and shaping, coming to me like a slab of potter’s clay, but this one hit me like a punch to the gut, so much so that I actually remember sitting down for a moment, reeling from its impact.
That’s a nice feeling. I wish I could have it more often. Of course, that doesn’t always mean the story’s any good, but I think it often does. I guess you’ll have to go read the story to find out. Why, you don’t even have to subscribe. You can get an electronic copy from Fictionwise.
Now see how sly I was, working in that plug?