All Mine

First and foremost, a reminder: I will be at Roanoke Pride this Sunday, all day! I'll have candy and other goodies to give away, and I might even be wearing my leather corset! Come say hi, and while you're there you can fervently thank my Torquere Press editor who made both Of One Mind and Safe Harbor fit for public consumption. I promise you don't need to actually be gay to enjoy the festivities!

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Second, another notice: Torquere's 2010 Charity Sips, benefiting Doctors Without Borders, are in their last week; the 2011 Charity Sips will go up this Saturday morning. So if you'd been meaning to pick up "Of Sound Mind" or any of the other 2010 stories, now is the time and Friday is the last possible day to get these awesome tales!

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And in actual writing (as opposed to marketing or publishing) news... Holy shit, I think I finished my (very) rough draft of Foxfur! Except for a couple of scenes that I have marked out as "maybe"s, and the fact that the whole intro needs to be rewritten. But at least I have a skeleton to work from, now. Sometimes that makes the rewrites easier. I did the same thing with Of One Mind -- y'all would not believe the horrible beginning that I had on that one to begin with. Seriously.

So I put Foxfur away for a while, and started a new project, called "Next Thursday Night." I think it's going to be a short instead of a novella, but we'll see. It's a bit of a departure for me -- a contemporary, with no supernatural elements about it at all. Just two regular guys undergoing some growing pains with their uncomplicated, no-nonsense relationship. I'm about 1200 words in already, though I think a lot of what I wrote last night is ramble-y and will need to be sternly pruned.

But it feels good to be writing regularly again. I mean, really good.

I'd had a kind of crap day Monday, and after I'd put the kids to bed and was getting into the shower I thought maybe I would not try to write. Maybe I would just take the evening off and kick back and relax. Vegetate.

But then I thought, Why? I've had a nonstop crazy, crappy day. I deserve to sit on my comfy bed and light a couple of candles and prop my iPad up on my knees and write.

That thought took me by surprise, but it felt real. It felt good. It reminded me that, even published and trying to remember to build a web presence and increase the size of my readership and all... that the whole reason I write... is for me. Just for me.

Don't get me wrong. I love being published. I love you guys. But I'm not really thinking about you, or even about the publisher or the submission call, when I'm writing. I'm writing for me, and the stories I want to know.

But just to show you how much I love you... if you leave some prompts, I'll post flash fics on Friday.