Today I've been spending time watching the rain and listening to it rattling on the roof. For me, it's a way of wrapping my mind around what I'm to write for the day. I'm not shelving the "Shelf" story, far from it, but progress is slow. I'm still recuperating from my end-of-the-year bout of pneumonia (never had it before, and sure don't want it again!). As I keep on telling friends, I've recuperated ninety percent--the last ten percent is the hard part. The process cuts into my creativity; in the meantime, I've been reading and reading, and watching old movies and nature documentaries, as well as keeping up with what my writing group is up to while I'm away. Enough said. Brevity is undervalued.
Best to put most of my efforts into the current project (as well as healing); that is where I have things to say.
I started this piece of sf last summer, and as of this week it's exceeded 5,000 words. All I'm going to say is that it deals with humans forming a symbiosis with sea creatures on another planet, after these humans have forgotten the details--other than vague mythological references--of the world they came from... and much of the technology they originally had brought with them. The title refers to a continental shelf and the inhabited island that perches on its edge, at a ledge that forms a overhang over the drop-off. Many possibilities here--I just won't give away what ones appear in this story...
My blog is named after the hero of my pun-filled, tongue-in-cheek science-fiction series of short stories (four of them so far):
“Surgical Diplomacy,” which introduces us to David Ventax, intergalactic diplomat extraordinaire, and the Continuum Complex at the center of our universe’s space and time
“Planet of the Apiary,” taking place on a planet of sentient, mobile plants who heavily rely on oversized pollinators
“Goldstinger,” on an insectoid world, loosely spoofing James Bond
“Real Time,” which plays around with time-travel and the geological time-scale on a planet of sentient birds and sentient rocks
As you might guess, I’m playing fast and loose with science—but there is some science in there. Sticklers to genre might call this science-fantasy. I don’t pretend to categorize what I write in this continuing series; I just have fun with it.
Outside this series, the more serious “Josephine and Starry Night” was printed in the anthology Off the Ecliptic, also put together by the writers group I’ve just mentioned. I’ve completed several other stories, and there’s no accurate count of all the others—short, novella, and novel length—still just begun, waiting for me to get back to them. And then there’s my first completed novel... I’ll let you know when I get it published, and then more details about it will be available.
I also write poetry because I enjoy working with words (that maybe explains my weakness for puns), their sounds, and the rhythms of text read aloud. And imagery—I want to create that most of all, and try to include it in as much of my fiction as I can as well.
That’s it for now. This probably will be as long as my entries will get, and most should be much shorter.
