It's only just occurred to me, writing this, how apt my story "The World in a Bottle" is for the times. I could easily be accused of writing a pandemic story - it's about someone trapped in a simulation, the bottle of the title - but it wasn't deliberate. The story was written in January 2020, just before the pandemic struck.

Anyway, go read it at Nature Futures.

Apparently I forgot to update (and it's late now as Christmas has come and gone), but "A Night of Many Months" went up at Pseudopod on Christmas Day. I need to write some more dark Christmas stories, as I enjoy them, but there are only so many ways you can torture Santa. I have a couple more things forthcoming, but no idea on when they'll be published so I'm not announcing them for the time being.

Tentative plans made for this year, and none of them involve wordcount.

The first is to be more proactive about keeping track of deadlines, to which end I have a wall calendar on which I write them as I find them, and a running list in my bullet journal of the ones for the current and following month. The plan is to pick a deadline to write for each month, which should net me 12 new or completed pieces of work by the end of the year (January's deadline being to finish editing a poem I drafted last year).

I'm currently taking part in a writing contest over at my online writing group, the aim of which is to produce a new piece of flash every week for five weeks, and another side project with a similar goal. So far this year I've written three stories, one of which is fine as flash and another that needs to be worked into something longer. The third, this week's entry, is awaiting judgement.

The trick will be not to lose momentum when the flash challenge finishes next month, and I think the key will be having so many pieces on the go, in various stages of development, that I'm never stuck with nothing to work on.

I also plan to restart with the Babylon 5 blog posts (without letting them take the place of actual writing), because I did enjoy doing them before I got overwhelmed with stuff. And I need to figure out what I'm doing with my novella, because I'd like to finish it, but clearly working from an outline wasn't working as it killed any love I had for it. I suspect writing the first draft at speed over a short period of time is the way to go, but it's a long time until NaNoWriMo.

Taking a hiatus on the Babylon 5 posts due to a family emergency, but hope to be back with them in a week or two once the routine and energy levels even out again. At the moment I'm not up to much beyond going to work, and watching repeats of The Great British Bake Off on Netflix.

There has been some writing news. My story "Armistice War", which was published in the Flame Tree Press newsletter in June is now available on their website for non-subscribers. "In Search of Camanac" has been reprinted in the anthology Pioneers and Pathfinders, and the overall table of contents looks fantastic. I've sold another reprint, to a market I'm excited to break into, but I'm waiting for the contract before I make it public.

This year is turning out to be a lean year in terms of writing output. I've written some poems, some for publication and some just for fun, but not much new fiction. It's frustrating, and I'm wondering how I've got to October already without doing any of the things I planned. Sometimes it just turns out that way so I'm trying not to beat myself up about it. I should be reclaiming a handful of hours to write each week, due to a shift in my working hours, so hopefully that will help. If not, at least it's nearly the new year already and I can start again.

I should probably update this since it's a two publication month. 

First up: "The Resurgence of Clowns" over at Daily Science Fiction.
We knew it was happening again when David started juggling.

I wrote the first draft of this in one sitting, just before bed, while listening to scary clown music. It came from a title prompt during a flash fiction contest, and the concept and first line came shortly after.

The second is "Totality", one of my rare science fiction stories which was published at Nature.
Two days ago it had been "we don't negotiate with terrorists", but it was difficult not to negotiate with people who'd stolen the sun.

This one required a bit more research - what would happen when the sun went out? It also came from a title, but not the one I used. It was the gloriously pulpy "The Spacemen who Devoured the Morning" from the Pulp Sci-Fi Title-O-Tron over at Thrilling Tales. That gave me the idea, although it was a far more serious story than the title warranted.

I also found (and spent a couple of hours binge-reading) an amazing creepypasta over on Reddit, called "The Left/Right Game". It 's got me wanting to read more. I also played a fun little text-based game called "You are Jeff Bezos", where you wake up as Jeff Bezos and have to spend all his money. It took a few tries, but I managed to get all three endings.

Finally, I spent this weekend binge-watching The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which is all kinds of hilarious. I love the changes they've made (Salem doesn't talk, the advice and sarcasm is provided by Sabrina's cousin Ambrose who's under house arrest for trying to blow up the Vatican), although some of the politics is a little on the nose. Perhaps it needs to be, these days, and it does add to the fun.

My February #12for12 piece "Essence" was published over at Riddled with Arrows. It's a market that specialises in meta-fiction - writing about writing - so the story is little more than an extended literary joke, but I like it. Not least because I was experimenting with different formats earlier in the year, something flash makes easy to play with, so it's told through the medium of an internet chat log.

Very little writing done in March, other than getting the other oubliette piece out, as mentioned before. Towards the end of the month I wrote a poem, then finished it off and submitted it over the weekend so it counts for April's #12for12. I'm supposed to be spending the next six weeks writing a novella at the rate of 400 words a day, but I had an otherwise rough weekend so I'm already two days behind. It doesn't help that I don't have a name for my main character yet (or even an idea why they're the main character, I'm not sure they are), or an opening scene. I've a good idea where I'm going, just not where to start.

At this point it's still possible to catch up, but I'd better get started soon.

I seem to have forgotten to mention that the Flash Fiction Online Anthology 2015 came out in January, and contains my story "Your Past Life Interferes with My Very Important Studies". This story is one of my favourites, and came from the combination of random prompts at Codex Writers' Group - the title "Your Past Life Interferes with My Very Important Hobbies", having to use one of Shakespeare's characters or plots as inspiration - and the first line "Your past life drank all the milk again" landing in my head. At first I tried to resist writing the story. I thought it would be too silly, which just goes to show you should write the story that wants to be written instead of what you think you should be writing.

I've just started another story and I'm having the same problem. At this early stage I'm not sure the whole idea isn't going to come across terribly corny and contrived. Unfortunately, being a discovery writer, I won't find out until I write it. Another problem was I couldn't start until I had the main character's name. Placeholder names don't work for me, I can't change the name later as the character grows into it. One day it might be fun to start with a silly character name and see where it takes me. For now I've got this story to keep me going.

I'm trying to decide about doing NaNoWriMo this year. I'd like to, in that it's done wonders for my productivity in the past, although I'm not sure I have the mental energy to sustain it this year. Probably it's the idea of doing it I'm finding attractive, since I remember how much I enjoyed previous years. Perhaps I'll sign up to a shorter project instead, a half NaNo or a story a week. I certainly need to get some momentum back up again.

So apparently I haven't posted since January. This has been due to a minor-but-scary health problem that hit in February, finishing my training period at work, and deciding to take March off of writng to just read all the things. Then at the beginning of this month some more major-league adulting started. I'm vague-booking, I know, but I don't really feel like blogging any of it. At the moment I'm seriously out of spoons.

I haven't been completely resting on my laurels though. I have a short piece in the current SF Signal Mind Meld: SF/F TV Character Deaths That Had Us Shaking Our Heads.

I'm trying to get back into writing, but honestly a second month of reading looks great from here.

I managed to forget that my flash story "Paying for Death" was published by Sorcerous Signals. Things have been a little bust lately, what with broken bones (not mine!) and overtime at the day job. Here's a link!


"You're sure you want to do this?"

That was it. No greeting, no discussion. Mirri nodded and swallowed around the lump in
her throat, proffering a lock of golden hair tied with a thread.

I've been woefully neglecting my blog lately. So much so that I even forgot to post about the awesome Toasted Cake podcast of my flash story "A Primary Function". This story remains one of my favourites, because it's just plain evil.

This blog isn't the only thing I've been neglecting. From writing, to eating my five-a-day, to getting the stairs instead of the lift, it's very easy to take the path of least resistance. Especially when you spend all day at work, come home to cooking and cleaning (more work), and still have to write something (which by then feels a lot like work). In an effort to make the things I'm supposed to do more fun, I've joined a site called Habit RPG.

It's basically a website where you make a list of all the things you need to do, then check them off as you do them. You can have Habit, which are things you want to get in the habit of doing or not doing - which can have a positive or negative value (for example taking the stairs versus taking the lift). You can have Dailies, which are things that need to be done every day or on specific days of the week. Or you can have To Dos, which are things you really should get around to doing at some point, like your taxes. You can set these up with checklists too, which is ideal for long-term projects.

The reason this is better than just keeping it all on a piece of paper, is that it's also a game. Specifically, as the title suggests, a roleplaying game. You start as a little warrior avatar, and checking off your tasks gets you gold to buy equipment, and XP to level up with.  If you click a negative habit, or fail to check off a daily, you take damage. At level 10 you can choose a character class (warrior, healer, wizard, or rogue). I picked rogue, because I know myself well enough to admit I'm mostly in it for the random drops, which rogues get more of.

Every so often checking off a task will drop a random item on you: eggs, from which you can hatch cute little pets, and hatching potions which determine the flavour of pet you get. Combining a flying pig egg and a zombie hatching potion gets you an ugly yet amusing zombie flying pig. I'm personally waiting for a shade potion so I can hatch an evil panda. Because why not?

It also fosters a sense of co-operation. You can join a Guild, which is a bunch of people with an interest in common, or a Party in which to do quests. Some quests are "drop quests" where your random drops include items the party is trying to reach a particular number of, and boss fights where doing your tasks causes damage to some random evil you're trying to defeat. The other side of this is that your missed dailies go towards the damage the boss does and so can hurt the rest of the party.

So far it's got me eating my five a day and climbing the stairs, stopped me eating crisps, and helped me organise a massive house clean. I currently have writing and submitting down as habits, but I'm about to switch some of them over to dailies for that spot of extra motivation. Since my main problem is remembering to do the things I've decided I need to do, having them all in one place and getting rewards for doing them is really helping.

I know some people will look down on using a game as a motivator, but frankly we're not all super-organised and saintly, and able to do all of life's Shoulds without a bit of help. I'm not interested in the kind of outlook that says life should be all about being sensible and adult. And neither is my zombie flying pig.

Once again I've been a bit lazy on the internetting this last week. Although that's not necessarily a bad thing.

There's an interview with me over at Anaea Lay's website today - Telling Lies for Fun and Profit. Some of the answers may seem a little odd: the clue's in the title.

My story "The Message" went up at Kazka Press last week. And my copies of Cucurbital 3 arrived as well.

And my one and only "Link I Like" collected last week was: Three Signs You're Renovating a Condemned Novel.