For some reason, my Muse has lately switched to prose fiction in quantities that are at times amazing. This logorrhea occurs when I'm least expecting it, and as quickly as I type nowadays since switching to translation for a living, I can knock out a short story in a single sitting, and a full-length novel in a few days. But only when the Muse wants to. I have no real control over it beyond re-reading a story and seeing if anything writes itself. This can be frustrating -- there is one book I particularly enjoyed, but I have no idea how it's going to end. Another book has an end which abruptly got written when I skipped ahead a chapter -- but it has no finished middle, except for some sketchy notes.

And there just isn't much short fiction, for some reason. This is mildly disappointing. I'm probably not going to publish a book online (if I type that much, I want at least the tiny chance of making a buck off it), but I've got no problem giving away short fiction. So I wish there were more, but in terms of quantity of words, I appear to lean towards the Stephen King end of the scale.

April 25, 2008:
Richards (8743 words)
That said, I do just happen to have a short story written and complete. I rather like it. It doesn't have a title, except its working title: Richards. Feel free to suggest a title if anything occurs to you. I wrote it one day in January, and there it sat until today -- I had managed to forget I'd written it! (It was entertaining to read, though.) Weighing in at 8743 words, this is in the novellette range. I doubt I'd be able to sell it.

May 27, 2008:
John (10,232 words)
I've just written another story I like -- I don't care if any of the rest of you like them, because they correspond to my tastes just fine! Anyway, by chance this one meets the submission guidelines over at Futurismic, so I submitted it. In 2 to 5 weeks, I should know whether they like it; if not, it goes up here.

May 30, 2008:
Tales of the Singularity: Lord Cthulhu Walks the Desert (2257 words)
So I had this tasty idea while walking the dog on the beach yesterday - a series of stories in a folk-tale style about events leading up to the Singularity. The dog loved the idea (although, to be fair, she likes all my ideas.) Anyway, by evening I'd written the first one, which isn't a folk tale, but something that actually happened. This is the shortest piece of fiction I've ever written, except for stuff that's not regular story-style prose (by which I mean Toonbots scripts and the occasional forum post.) I hope you like it.

June 1, 2008:
Tales of the Singularity: Bruce Schneier and the King of the Crabs (1681 words)
These are like little potato chip stories. You can't write just one.

June 3, 2008:
Tales of the Singularity: Paul Bunyan and the Spambot (2000 words or so)
I had to finish this one so I can reboot my desktop machine.

July 14, 2008:
Apparently getting BoingBoing'd kind of satisfied my fiction muse for now; I've been coding, instead (and frantically busy with paying work, but that's always the case.) And working on the book-length stuff again -- some of which may actually be publishable, assuming it ever gets finished. I had a couple of good Paul Bunyan ideas that I might write down soon, and another one that's not too Tales-of-the-Singularity in nature that really consists of a good character so far, but no plot. We'll see what comes of that one.