Something Wicked This Way Plumbs is now available as a free download from Shimmer Magazine. It’s also being printed in chapbook form and sent to subscribers. Happy Halloween and/or Samhain to all!

“Pointing at the Moon” will appear in a forthcoming issue of COSMOS Magazine.  My first hard sf sale–hooray!

4.5 stories drafted.

3.5 stories revised.

That adds up to 8. I’ll take it. 🙂

From gramina’s lj:

20 years ago: Just started 6th grade. Very excited about the Big Change of going to middle school, where I would have different teachers for each subject, and change classrooms for each class.

15 years ago: A junior in high school. I just got my drivers’ license and was thrilled with driving myself to school. Also very interested in Academic Decathlon, for which I was finally eligible.

10 years ago: Senior in college. Burned out on academics, tired of school, anxious about what to do after graduation. But in October I was probably still enjoying my friends and roleplaying a lot.

5 years ago: Working tech support for AT&T. Sort of a stasis point where I wasn’t sure what to do. About to start NaNoWriMo for the first time, which would lead to my moving to the Bay Area, which would start a whole series of positive changes.

1 year ago: Lots of writing. Not a lot has changed since last year, now that I think about it. I was preparing for our belated honeymoon, which we’d take in the springtime, and that turned out wonderfully.

On the BART home, as I was half-asleep, I realized something.

It is far easier to describe what a story’s first sentence should do than to describe what a story’s final sentence should do.

This is because a story is like a chess game. The board always starts the same way: a blank page. Anything could happen here. Certain moves are usually strong–such as moving the pawns in front of the king or the queen. That’s why so many people do it. Other moves are weak–unless you have a damn good idea what you’re doing. That’s how you can win even with an apparently stupid set of opening moves. But it takes an expert chess player to deviate from the standard sorts of opening moves and still win the game.

After the opening moves, the game progresses. You capture enemy figures; you make a few sacrifices of your own. Pieces leave the board. Eventually we reach the endgame–and the outcome here depends on which pieces are left. If you played well, you’ll have a king and a queen and maybe some other pieces left to checkmate the opponent. If you played poorly, you’ll have a king and bishop and a rook, which most chess players will tell you makes for a tricky endgame. (If you played really badly, you’ll already have lost or be headed for stalemate.)

The final moves of the story depend on all the decisions you’ve made earlier. So it’s hard to describe what the last sentence of a story should do beyond “checkmate the king,” because so much depends on which pieces you’ve got left. That’s why pages and pages of chess manuals are devoted to each possible subtype of endgame: each one has its own strategies and tactics.

Thoughts? Especially from any writers who love chess.

A crochet hamburger dress.

I’m amused that so many personality and career tests all give me the same answer: become a minister.

Anyone know of a job for a scientific pantheist?

Seriously. I’ve got to get started on forming my own cult.

Kill Me is now available at Helix.

From LiveJournal.  Seems like a nice way to start a Monday.

Reply to this post, and I will write one thing I love/admire/find impressive about you. Maybe more than one. Then [no obligation: only if you feel like doing it] repost to your own journal and spread the love.