It has been a pretty good start to the year, with a fourth story taken by AE, “No Less Constant.” It was originally called “The Fire and the Rose Are One” after a line in Eliot. Duff also suggested some very good edits to the end, and it was published quickly. You can find it here. Once again AE illustrated it with a wonderful piece of art.

Also my story “The Revivalist,” which was one of the first Sips Cards stories, is going to be podcast by Gallery of Curiosities,  which is evolving out of the steampunk podcast Tales from New Babbage. Another site where I subbed it as a reprint loved it, but thought it should actually be the beginning of a novella, which completely fired my imagination. I dream of writing novellas, despite the market being very limited. (Michener’s The Bridges at Toko-Ri is the perfect model, structurally). I’ve already outlined one, in fact, The Dragon Knight’s Daughter, but I stalled in writing it, I realized the other day, because I haven’t created a more concrete view of the world. Similarly, to write a “Revivalist” novella I have to figure out what happened to the husband. These will have to wait a while, though. Novel first.

I’m in the middle of outline three of chapter 7 of Dragon Tower, which tries to recover from what one of my characters did in chapter 6: up and kill another character while I sat at my typewriter watching helplessly. Fortunately, a third character showed up to help with the body, so I’ve got that going for me. I’m not sure if it’s a good or a bad thing that I’m no longer writing the book. I’m just reporting on what these characters are doing. Ideally I’ll finish the chapter by the end of the week.

I think I’ll get through chapter 8, then start on the first draft. That way I can be surprised by the ending too. In Dragon Round, I did the same thing–the entirety of the third outline for what became chapters 8-10 was, “X character goes to place Y”–so hopefully lightning will strike twice again. That way, I can also say I finished the third outline, mentally due 1/15, somewhat on time.

Finally, my found poems are included in the 2015 Unlost Journal Anthology. There’s some great work in there, especially the poem built out of Google search results. That’s just a brilliant idea.