It would seem that long short story (what an oxymoron of a term, but it’s the best to describe it so I’ll keep using it) that I wrote is going down well with Zoë whilst she is editing it, so I’m rather hopeful. Aparently my writing style is getting better and better, so we’ll see what magazine editors make of it. It’s called “Bringing home the stars” by the way, if the title of this blog post wasn’t obvious enough for you. I’m also impressed that it has lost only 400 words in the edit (and she says she is nearly done) which is far less than I was fearing. This means that it is still nearly 11,500 words so is a little too long to send to Interzone, so I’ll start with Asimovs then the Edge to submit to. Hopefully one or the other will buy it removing the need to butcher out of it 1,500 words to make it fit the hard word limit that Interzone stipulates.

Last night I started on the next short story. This is planned to be a far more modest 2,500-3,000 word piece and is called “The walls have ears”. I’m not going to get the time to finish it this week as I’m working tonight, out to the airport in the afternoon to provide a parental taxi service and I’m away from Friday through to late on Sunday with my Father crewing on his Garrett steam traction engine’s rally outing (it’s my one chance this year to play with a real steam engine and get covered in soot!). So more likely if I don’t get time today or tomorrow to get a little more written I’ll get it finished by the end of next week if I have time.

After that the plan is to do an edit on “The Atlantic Connection”, the biopunk thriller which was the first half of this year’s big project. If the short stories are gaining interest, I want to be able to get this manuscript out to follow any success up. After my rewrite I’ll pass the manuscript across to Zoë for a full edit job. Be gentle now!