“Fire Dance” is off to Flash Me Magazine as of today! I also wrote a new one for LH’s weekly Flash Challenge. I’m not very happy with it, mostly because I wanted to do much more with it than I was able to in 90 minutes. I’ll revise it and expand it some after the challenge is over.
Things have been busy around here. Very, very busy. Yet little money has been made by me, which doesn’t seem to justify the busy-ness. Hopefully that situation will change soon.
“Finnegan’s Pig” has been quasi-accepted at ASIM. They like it; they think they definitely probably want to buy it. I will apparently hear from them sometime in February or March with an offer and with an idea of in which future issue the story will appear. Either that, or they’ll contact me to tell me that they don’t want it after all. Either way, I’m elated. And a bit tickled that it’s looking right now as if my very first piece of writing ever professionally published will be a short story about a monster pig eating Jesus. Thanks, Liberty Hall! <3<3<3
Walk Like and Egyptian is progressing at a startling clip. I am most pleased and, frankly, astonished at what I can do once I’ve got an outline. One of these days I’ll post the fiasco that was organizing my outline. I took a couple of pictures of it because it was so insane. I believe the mess I made may have been approximately the same length as the human intestinal tract, and it stretched all across my living room floor in zigzag switchbacks, and my cats made many unsuccessful attempts to nest on its various parts (I was armed with a squirt bottle to keep them at a respectful distance). I force myself to stop daily after five or six pages, because I notice that my writing starts to get too rambly at that point. But if I really wanted to, I could go on working on Walk Like and Egyptian for eight or ten horus, I believe. That was supposed to read “hours,” obviously, but I left the typo in place because it amuses me. Ha ha - Egypt. Horus. Get it?
Anyway, with all this great writing energy I believe I could easily finish this book by the end of March/midway through April, provided I’m not overly distracted by my cute nephew who will be born any day now (but most likely on February 14th).
I really need to come up with a title for this book. Walk Like an Egyptian is obviously not suitable - I just use it her because I’ve got to call it something. And I like the Bangles. I’ve been toying with the idea of giving it the working title _Daughters of the Sun_ but I’m kind of “eh” on it right now. I just don’t know. But I do know that it’s a kickass book, and it’s an original take on the Tuthmosides. I’m quite proud of the funky little plot twists I’ve come up with. I figure historic fiction fans will either really like it or super-duper hate it because I took too many liberties with known history. But let’s face it. Hatshepsut’s reign just wasn’t that interesting, aside from the fact that she was a woman. She ruled during a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Everybody was completely happy, as far as anyone can tell. The courtiers who kept her in power obviously didn’t give a rip about her sex, since she ruled as co-Pharaoh with Tut III for an incredible twenty-two years. There was just not much drama going on during the 18th Dynasty, contrary to popular myth.
So…I made some of my own. I get to do that as a writer of fiction, right?
