Thursday Thoughts

Recently, I received a rejection on a story that commented it opened slowly. I'm aware of this, but I disagree that it's a problem. With an intriguing setup and a strong narration - which I've been told by editors it has - I feel that a reader should be curious about rather than bored by a short (emphasis on short) pre-plot section. The section in question is less than two manuscript pages out of twenty-three, and the information is crucial to the action pretty quickly. It was longer; I had already moved some of it forward into the action.

Anyhow, upshot: I've considered it, I've reviewed it with a cold eye, and it's staying. I believe I can find a publisher who sees the balance sheet. I've also seen published stories that positively dither before westward ho ...

The past few days have been crazy-busy. I've had hardly any time to work on the Journal of the Dead edit ... and when I do, I can't tell if my sense that X scene or Y scene is redundant is good instinct or just the fact that I'm tired, darnit. For now, I'm not making any drastic cuts, but I do think overall, I've removed more than I've added. Which with the way I write (you all know it) is a good thing.

I did choose my next short story from my pile of exercises ... and furthermore, decided to move my setting into the Butterfly's Poison world (otherwise known as the world of the Seventeen Seas). I already have a story published in that setting ("Currents and Clockwork" in Sails & Sorcery), which (if I'm recalling right) is about ten-fifteen years after BP. This time I'm going about three years before and making my lawyer an expatriate Calathinyan. Unfortunately, this means skimming back through my BP world notes to make sure that I'm consistent, because if the novel gets picked up or anyone compares the stories OR I decide to write another ...

This actually seems to be an inadvertent theme in that world. I'm always writing about people who are exiled or fled their homelands ... some of them miss it, others - like the MC in Currents and Clockwork - are trying very hard not to be dragged back. I wonder what this signifies.

Putting in my notes to write a story actually set in the Shardath sometime. Can I make an Oligarch (as they exist in-setting) sympathetic without turning the individual PC? Hrm. This one is set in Ilkanae, an island of city-states I created to be my (ancient, sorta) Greece -- in the theocratic city state. And the dominant religion of the Seventeen Seas is monotheistic ... so should be an interesting blend of elements. Already got some great ideas, if I can keep it from being too longwinded ...