Winter Projects

    NaNoWriMo for the year is done and I hit the mark, if just barely. Put down some good words and some terrible words, along with seeds for additional stories. With the closing of City of Heroes and the writing that I did related to the game, I'm going to let that rest before returning to edit. Looking at my call list there's four that are due by the end of the month or beginning of January. For the 3-10k splatterpunk I'm thinking something supernatural or that appears supernatural. Zombies in history is about the Dresden firebombing and how the Nazis were using a different type of slave labor. The horror in history call is nebulous, but I'm thinking about a faerie related story set in the old west. Bloodbound Books has a call that pays professional rates for up to 5k. Four stories, 26 days. Time to get busy. I'm seeing a theme in some of my stories, as they are based around faeries and fae-like creatures. Trying to stay away from vampires, werewolves, and zombies [history one aside], but not going to rule them out totally.

    Further out is a call for Urban Fantasy novella's and short stories along with pulp heroes and astrological short stories. The novella is a rewrite of an older submission that was rejected. Looking over it, I need to tighten it up. Originally it was written as a superhero romance, something that I've never thought I would write about in combo. It has demons, heroes, faerie, necromancers, and assorted other tropes that work in the super hero genre. The hero/protagonist had someone try to rip out his soul and stuff a demon in him. Didn't work out so well for any of the parties involved. Looking at it critically, I don't like it, so that idea goes out the window and he's become the child of a Faerie Lord and human romance. That ties in a bit better with the overall story. Removing the super hero related trappings isn't hard; a few renames here and there, tweaking of motivations, and giving some “logic” to the background. The one thing that I'm still looking at is to remove the romantic, but the call isn't specific to any theme, just Urban Fantasy. Either way, there's some tweaking involved to make the love interest more active in the story and not as passive.

    Last thing I need to catch up on is my reports for the local WHL hockey team here in Portland. Woefully behind on those.