Wednesday Wanderings

I've been debating if I want to start writing a new short story, to flex those muscles while I'm working up to my next novel project.  From a business standpoint, I'm not sure if it makes sense; I currently have a sizable backlog of unsold stories, and the markets seem to be closed more often, overbooked, on indefinite hiatus, or running brief submissions periods throughout the year.  On the other hand, I'm in a headspace right now where a bit of "play" might be welcome.

So here are some tidbits I've been tossing around:

Two women whose minds are trapped in the same body return to seek revenge on the monarch who banished them.  This whole one-body-many-minds trope is something of an obsession of mine; I've approached it numerous times from different angles.  My retired novel Journal of the Dead used the concept that whenever someone killed another person, the victim's mind leapt into their body.

Listening to the Sophie Ellis-Bextor song "The Walls Keep Saying Your Name," I thought about taking this literally.  There are two ways this could go; they're mutually exclusive, but I could always write both takes.  The first is a woman who can speak to residences, shops, any building, but the walls have no sense of time:  they may speak from the perspective of the present, or the past, or even the distant future.  The second is a city of sentient buildings, bound together in a hive mind.

And not so much a concept as two little sparks bouncing around, courtesy of the stock-needed whiteboard at work:  red dragon and rice wine vinegar.