Life is not fair

From Rich Horton in Locus, reprinted* in entirety by Doug Cohen at Realms of Fantasy. Here.

And the review of my story is below:

Euan Harvey’s ‘‘By Shackle and Lash’’ is a strong Persian-flavored story about a couple of soldiers whose cowardice gets them assigned to cleaning duty in a prison – and to dealing with a mysterious woman and, eventually, her hopes to escape to her city – a city long vanished.

Sounds good to me. Better go and buy a copy of the mag. (Follow the link above; you’ll see a link to buy an ecopy of the magazine.)

The novel is moving forward, sometimes painfully slowly, but it’s generally creeping towards the end. Except today, of course, where I lost 3,000 words or so. I was typing away merrily (well, cursing because the damn thing wouldn’t fall together), and my mind was wandering on to things that I’d have to cut from the book when I’d finished–and the chapter I was working on was one of them. It made no difference to the story; it just showed a very minor plot thingy that didn’t need to be shown. I just didn’t want people to forget one of the characters. So I cut it, and the manuscript shrank a small but noticeable amount. Ho hum. Might as well cut it now though. I’ll break 60,000 words on the draft today, and most of what I’ve written is solid–although I have a notepad file with about 15-20 things that need to be tweaked.

As one of the things I loathe about modern fantasy is the doorstep tendency to describe everything that the characters do in exhaustive detail with little or no meaningful conflict, I’m feeling okay about losing three days of work.

I’ve also managed to get 6,000 words into a short story which is going tremendously. Probable length when I’ve finished will be around 10,000 or so (which seems to be my first draft target for shorts).

Hit 55,000 in the WIP today. Almost exactly half way through. Mid novel blues. I’m convinced the novel is rubbish, I don’t like my prose (too much description, wandering along, indecisive), and I really want to go back and start revising.

But this always happens. Just got to push on until it passes.

Wreathed in Wisteria, Draped in Ivy is going to be published in the 100th issue of Realms of Fantasy. Dave Leri has done the illustration, and it’s pretty awesome. In fact, it’s so awesome, I had to shrink it a little, because the first time I posted it,  its sheer power BROKE THE INTERNETS!

So, I’ve been looking around, and quite a few people are charging 99c for a single short story. When I designed my e-books, I thought that no one would be interested in a single short for 99c, but now I think otherwise. I’ve read some articles on perception of value and price points, and I’m going to price each story that I think is worth it at 99c. This means each e-book will contain a single solid story. Something I think is really good, instead of one good story and three that are filler.

Thumbnail gallery is below. I’ll be updating the books for sale page when the Amazon links get sorted out.

Editor Douglas Cohen has a post about the ASFA and RoF’s nominations for the Chesley Art Awards. He’s also got a list of artists who’ve been nominated for work done for RoF. Three of the illustrations done for my stories have been nominated. So go check ‘em out!

Dave Leri’s interior illustration to “The Demon of Hochgarten” by Euan Harvey

Frank Wu’s interior illustration to “Hanuman’s Bridge” by Euan Harvey

Steady bu unspectacular–as ever. The draft is now up to 41,000 words and moving steadily forward. One of the characters is rounding out nicely. I had to rewrite his early scenes, but much stronger now. And he’s a nasty bastard as well. Always good.

My story By Shackle and Lash is out in this month’s issue of Realms of Fantasy. It’s the third short story published in the city of Quysayrah–the first two were The Claw Unseen and The Hand of Afaz. So if you enjoyed those, then get yourself a copy of RoF. It has a cool-looking cover as well.

And . . . it’s already been reviewed by Lois Tilton at Locus. “A strong story of tyranny and freedom,” she says. I think that means she likes it. Which is good–I think it’s a good story. (But I would say that . . . )

One minor point: I’m second on the TOC. When will I make first place? When? When?

But then again, I think they put Harlan Ellison last when he appeared, so maybe second is okay.

Edited to add: Actually, I’ve just seen that cover again. Harlan Ellison got his own billing above every one else. Damn him.

Last one for now. I’ve got a few more shorts to put into reprints, but they’re not long enough to make a decent length ebook.

Living in the Shadow of Dead Mountains continues to make slow progress. The draft is now up to 35,000 words, and I’m about one third of the way through my outline, so . . . just about right on length. Some of the writing is a little clunky in places, but mostly I’m happy with it. The plot is moving in the right direction–and more importantly, it’s doing so because the characters are doing what they want to, not what I want them to. The time spent developing the characters before drafting is paying off, though, because the plot feels unforced. Which is always good.