I forget if I’ve mentioned it on this blog, but I’ve taken to writing short stories again. Honestly I just got tired of trying to write another novel. I figure maybe one of my stories will turn into a novel. Maybe I’m trying to trick myself by telling myself they’re stories. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve been relatively pleased with the stories. They’re fun. Not only fun to write, but fun to read, too. They’ve got a playfulness that feels missing nowadays from my attempts at novels, which all feel doomed and leaden. I think it’s just that before I can clench up and destroy everything, the story is over.

Have sold two stories recently: “A Coward’s Death” to Lightspeed (my second there) and “Weft” to Beneath Ceaseless Skies (also my second). I’m pretty pleased with both of them, but I’ve written others recently that I like even more, and I’m hoping those will also sell eventually.

I do think sometimes that for the last five or six years I’ve been waiting for the moment when “the time” comes. You know, the moment when I find the thing I want to write about and when I produce my mature work. But it’s never felt really felt like that. When I wrote Enter Title Here, I thought, this is fantastic, but I also thought…this is a good start. Now I don’t know. It’s hard to say what comes next. Maybe these stories are my mature work. Maybe this is all there’ll ever be for me.

Oh well! It’s not so bad. Nice at least to write and to have the work out there (and I do sincerely mean that, since I know it’s not something one can take for granted). The rest is up to fate.