Just put the finishing touches on a new short story, SciFi with a hint of horror. I have to say I’m pretty excited about it, too. The preliminary idea I had a couple of years ago, one of those story bones I wrote down, saved the file and looked at every now and then to see if the spark was there yet. The spark arrived Friday, and today it’s done. Three drafts, 3k words, three days. Once it started flowing it was on, there was nothing I could do but write it down; it was one of those periods when you realize again why you write, why you tell stories, because you know it’s good, you feel it, it just sings to you. One of those stories you have no choice but to write. Sure, sometimes there’s filler stories, the ones you struggle through because you had an idea that just talked, but when they sing, boy, that’s a great feeling. It makes me think sometimes it might be what heroin is like (I’m not joking), because when the story sings to me and I’m flying through the writing… it just doesn’t get much better. I don’t know if it’s endorphins or serotonin or just old-fashioned adrenaline, but it is an undeniably exhilarating experience. Intoxicating. It makes me want another one. And the greatest part of it is it still comes; every once in a while I get that lightning in a bottle sensation that is just as good as the first one, and that’s something I hear even heroin can’t do for you. The last story I wrote under similar sensations is in publication now; I’m hoping this one will be too, and soon. It’s one of those that, when you put it in the envelope and you have just the right publisher picked out and you send it off, you can’t imagine how they could possibly say no. They will, of course, and that’s why the rejection hurts so bad sometimes–because this is the work of life, the stuff of dreams, the fabric of your imagination, and you know it’s good and right, but sometimes others just don’t see it, or for some reason pass on it. So you pick another publisher and eventually, if you do it enough times, you get that other high from writing: acceptance. Validation. Success.
The story itself is one I’ve wanted to write for a long time: a zombie story. It’s titled Planet Zombie, and it’s about priest/medic on a exploration mission through the Milky Way, who just happens to drop in on a planet where everything dies, where nothing lives, and yet the body remains animated. He knows his soul is gone. His heart stops beating, he isn’t affected by the cold of the planet’s surface, nor the radiation, nor the choking gaseous atmosphere. He feels his soul slip away, feels his death, and knows that God has abandoned him. My wife read it and said it was good, but gross (she didn’t like the part where the geologist is sitting on the floor eating his own fingers). It’s a new take on an old genre, which is something that publishers say they like to get. Go ahead and pencil me in for my Nebula; it’s a lock.
If you liked that post, then try these...
Overused Words; the plight of the descriptive adjective on June 4th, 2008
Release Day!! on October 1st, 2007
Various and Sundry on January 30th, 2008
The Book on December 12th, 2007
How I Got My First Story Published on August 27th, 2007
