Another new short story has joined the pack, but it’s also . . . an old story. I decided to rewrite “The Curse,” a short story I initially completed in 2002. Yes, 2002!

This is one of the earliest stories I started sending out to magazines. It collected a few rejections and I ended up retiring it because the parts that were supposed to be commentary on human nature read more like really smug exposition and I didn’t think it was good as it was. I put it on the shelf thinking maybe I’d rewrite it someday. And that day came on June 8. I started revamping the story.

The parts of it that used to be just narration have been transmuted into a series of radio interviews, which makes them way more interesting to read and a lot less like you’re reading some author’s frame story. But that’s only half the story. The other half is a more traditionally rendered pseudo-fantasy quest, and I kept a lot of the content from the original story.

And I don’t know that that’s a good thing. I’ve reread those bits and tweaked them a lot but I may need to actually fully rebuild those too before I feel comfortable with the story.

The thing I’m most worried about, though, is how prone it is to looking like it’s trying to be some top-down insightful nothingburger commentary on humanity. It might come across as fake deep and no one wants that.

But I’m happy it’s done–I wrapped it up in five writing sessions and it’s sitting at about 10,000 words. I’d like to cut it down of course but the transcript format makes that tougher. Oh well. This story’s central idea is one I did care about and I want to figure out how to tell it so people actually want to read it.

Another new short story has been born after an idea seized me on the night of April 19. Now welcoming my new completed story “In Your Favor” to the fold.

It’s been a while since an idea would not let me rest. I initially thought this one would be short because it’s a genre I have never written before and I was just testing the waters, but 23,000 words later, I have a novella on my hands. Churned out restlessly in eight days during a week I was otherwise very overbooked and busy. Quality of its first draft, if I may say so, is unusual. Especially considering how little I slept.

“In Your Favor” is about six aspiring adventurers whose last stop before shipping out on quests is a ritual to get their magic powers. One catch: Only five of the six will be given a talent, and traditionally the sixth member becomes a team manager who can’t go on the adventures. I’ve never written anything remotely associated with quest-fantasy plots and I don’t read much traditional fantasy, nor do I play any role-playing games, so I felt a little out of my depth doing something that others would probably read as essentially LitRPG (or at least LitRPG-adjacent). Not my thing whatsoever, but here I was writing it.

Premise aside, though, this completely plays to my strengths. It’s a character interaction piece. We don’t actually get to see a quest happen; it’s basically a bottle episode. It’s entirely about what develops when six friends who have been through a lot together have to face a huge change happening to all of them at once, how their relationships shift and endure, and how they pull together or fall apart when the final truths are decided.

And because it’s me writing it, of course half the team is queer. The main character is in a (poorly hidden) secret same-sex relationship with another character, and the cast includes a nonbinary member for no plot-relevant reason. I really appreciate incidental queerness and want to incorporate it into more stories.

I love my little group even though I just met them. I adore them with my whole heart.

New short story! This one is about two administrative professionals having epic disagreements about file organization.

The main character is not like me in most ways–she’s more aggressive, a little less compassionate, and gay–but we share the experience of working in a male-dominated field in an administrative capacity and being secretly queer at work. Her opposite–an outgoing employee who trains her before leaving THE FILES in her capable hands–is not based on anyone I know, and struggles with some mental health issues.

The story itself is not autobiographical, but nearly all of the examples of workplace bullshittery are things that really happened to me. I made the guys geotechnical engineers instead of the transportation engineers I work with, but there’s a lot of overlap.

It’s a little on the long side at 6,000 words (NO ONE HERE IS SURPRISED), but its length shouldn’t be too prohibitive in finding a place for it to live. I’ll start sending it out tomorrow.