Greetings from the edge,
I’ve been a busy bee. I now have about half of the Silence of the Lambs article written, and I’m still ploughing my way through On Writing.
At this point, it feels less like a craft book and more like Stephen King is sitting on the other side of your desk, smoking, glaring, and occasionally throwing things at you if your attention starts to drift. It is less “creative writing guide” and more “literary boot camp”.
One of the first things he tells you is that not everyone reading his book is cut out to be a writer, let alone a good one. That is about as encouraging as he gets.
To be fair, though, he is right. No book on Earth can take someone who struggles to write a sentence and turn them into the next Ernest Hemingway.
I’m hoping to post another piece of fiction later today and give The Bone Garden another coat of paint. The feedback has been pretty consistent so far: almost everyone wants more of it.
I’ll probably send it off to Asimov’s Science Fiction on Monday, and when I inevitably receive a polite note saying it is not right for them at this time, I’ll simply send it on to the next name on the list.
I’ve also started bolting together a new project under the working title Rare.
It is essentially the story of the first chaotic days of a zombie outbreak, told from the point of view of a chef working in a vegetarian restaurant who gets bitten.
The infection takes around three days to kill him, and during that time, he goes from being a staunch vegetarian to craving meat… then rare meat… then raw meat… then meat that is still warm.
He is going to die.
The real question is how much of his humanity he will lose along the way.
See you in the margins,
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