Greetings from the edge,
I got some last-minute feedback on The Bone Garden, so I’m thinking about reworking it in a few places. The main thing I keep hearing is that readers want more of it.
That suggests there may be more story there than the format of a long short story can comfortably hold. It might need to become a novelette, or even a novella. One reader even said it felt like the pilot episode for a series.
I’m choosing to take that as a compliment.
Given that it is supposed to be one of several stories I eventually publish together as an anthology, that is probably exactly how it should have landed.
I’m still studying On Writing and trying to squeeze every drop of useful advice out of it.
Alongside that, I’m reading The Three-Body Problem and The Word for World Is Forest.
Both are excellent, but in very different ways.
The Three-Body Problem feels a bit like sitting through a history lesson while someone angrily shouts advanced physics terminology at you for the first couple of chapters. Thankfully, it settles down after a while, and I’m enjoying it a lot.
At the other end of the spectrum, The Word for World Is Forest is something altogether stranger. I’m only a chapter in, but so far it feels like an alien invasion story where the humans are the villains. Very clever stuff. It is also a brilliant lesson in characterisation and in making even unpleasant characters feel recognisably human.
So that’s where I am right now: up to my neck in rewrites and reading, with an article looming over it all wearing a slightly disturbing smile.
See you in the margins,
Leave a Reply