Echoes in a Hollow Space

I'm looking for readers for my novelette, "Sealed With A Curse." I'll be glad to return the favor in kind. ABSOLUTELY NO VAMPIRE CONTENT. :-)

I'm not looking for heavy duty critiques, just an overall feel for if it works or not, if it can still be cut down. I've lost all perspective on it. I'm especially interested in knowing if the beginning draws the reader in—and if it doesn't, the reading task is easily dispensed with. Just stop reading and let me know it doesn't work. I'd run this through the workshop again, but it would take all three slots and I don't want to interrupt posting The Novel at this juncture.

Here's the blurb:

Early in the Eighteenth Century, Simon Jellicoe, a mysterious cunning man, shows up at the English country inn of Megan and Robin Boyle. Strong emotional currents weave through this inn: Megan is four months pregnant by her lover, worthless Neddy Jenkin. She married Robin in order to give her unborn child security, not telling Robin she was pregnant. Although Robin adores her, no man likes to be cuckolded and Megan fears things will go wrong because despite her certain knowledge that Neddy won't take care of her, she still desires him and he's still hanging about. She's thinking of asking Simon Jellicoe to cast a spell to make things turn out right, but as Simon can tell her, spells often go badly awry if they are cast with muddy intentions...

About 15,000 words SMF/61 pages (okay, 15,250 words SMF).

Contact me at sapelle@yahoo.com if you're interested.

Hmm. I may have to come up with a story to go with that title.

Anyway, I've been trying since Friday to finish a story I started in November '02. Today could be the day! But we'll see. Every time I get to the last jump, it refuses and goes around to some new material that I didn't know existed before. But it's close, damned close, and I thought it was worth delaying the novel rewrite a few days to get it done. This story is called The Green Ones, and it's a contemporary horror comedy with science fiction overtones—in other words, my usual cross-genre mess. It hasn't got great literary merit (in fact, it may actually have anti-merit), but it's been enormous fun to write. It has a kick-ass, bitchy heroine and a truly goofy premise. So we'll see if it's fit to post after it's settled for a month or so. And after I've finished it, of course.

I haven't worked on it steadily all this time, naturally: three or four bursts of concentrated energy followed by long hiatuses (hiatusi?), my typical work pattern. Which is why I prefer to say my unfinished works are on hiatus, not abandoned, because eventually I get back to them. Sometimes years later, but I get back to them. In fact, after I'd concluded earlier last week that Ramona was going on hiatus I decided to finish out the week by working on more short stories before heading into the massive rewrite process of Shivery Bones. So I turned my attention to an old story, The Horse My Father Rode, and cleaned that up a bit. I dunno about that one. It has some good elements but I'm just not sure it works. It is most definitely not a comedy and I'm just not sure about it. However, way back in the misty days of yore I sent it to a lit magazine and got my very first encouraging personal rejection from an actual editor, so there's something there. I'm just not sure what or how much.

You know, an encouraging acceptance would really be welcome at this point in my non-career.

So I've hauled out the xerox box filled with the draft of Shivery Bones plus all the reviews. (Yeah, I'm so un-Green for not keeping everything electronic, but I just need to edit on paper. Sorry! I do recycle the paper once I'm through with it, though.) I haven't actually pulled anything out of this xerox box yet. I keep looking at it out the corner of my eye and shying away like a horse mistaking a hank of rope for a snake. This rewrite process could be ugly. The finished first draft is just over 151k. Ugh! I foresee a whole lot of cutting in my future. That's okay. It'll be much better without the excess. I don't mind revision on novels so much. It's torture for me in short stories because I always wind up horribly confused about what should stay and what should go; what tells too much and what not enough. Somehow I don't have that problem as much with novels. It's much more obvious to me in a novel context what should stay and what should go. Novels, of course, have their own methods of torturing me, but that's another story...

If you're listening, Jon, my confusion may have something to do with discovering the theme prior to writing, which I don't do. That doesn't nail me in novels so much because with a work that long I think trying to force a theme up front can queer the whole deal. In a novel the theme tends to reveal itself over time and, for me at least, is much richer for that journey through my psyche. That's not so much the case with shorts, but since I'm incapable of saying, "This is the theme," and working from there (tried it several times, failed miserably), I guess I'm screwed.

And on the Go-Ahead-Reject-Me-I-Don't-Care front, I got my "no grabee" for Sealed With A Curse from Mr. Adams at F&SF as expected on Monday—this Monday, not last. The delay may have been my fault: I was semi-brain dead when I sent the package out and after mailing it, had a vague notion something was wrong with it. I'd done something very stupid with the SASE, which I won't detail here—too embarrassing. But the curt note scribbled on the back of the envelope indicates a certain irritation . . . How to win editors and influence associate editors. :-/

I had zero expectations that they'd accept that story, but that mutant seed hope just can't be crushed completely. SWAC will go back in the drawer until I'm ready to face it again. Increasingly, I'm convinced I'm a novelist and shouldn't waste my time with stories, but they do make a nice break from the long stuff, and there's a certain sense of liberation in finishing something short. So no rule which says I can't write them, but I may have to face the fact that I won't sell them.

I will push on with my literary demerited story today and see what happens.

Sent my short-short style monkey, Band of Angels, out to Strange Horizons this morning. We'll see if Angel has wings, but frankly, I don't think has a chance in Hell, but what the hell? It's good practice in Sending Stuff Out, my mission for this year.

Besides, Angel is one of the few stories I have that's short enough for SH. For some reason, everything I write wants to be a novel, even the short stories. I can never seem to get anything under 7500 words. 9-10k is about standard for my short stories. *sigh* Actually, 12k is about standard for my short stories, but I usually manage to hack them down to about 9-10k. And I've written a couple of short stories that were closer to 30k. Ahem. I managed to whack one of them, Sealed With A Curse, down to about 15k, but the other is currently taking up a lot of space on the OWW. Or rather, it will take up a lot of space once I post all six parts. I see much hack and whacking in that story's future...unless I decide to turn it into a novel or part of a novel. :-)

I guess I'm a blabbermouth. Which should be no surprise to anybody who's read this blog.