Well, only two and half months after leaving Seattle, I finally finished my first post-Clarion story, "Mind is the Shadow of Shadowmind," about a guy who comes back from some traumatic experiences in a futuristic war to have an even stranger experience back home in Miami.

Anyway, it ended up coming in at about 8,300 words. Not, mind you, that I've been working on it this whole time. I got the idea just about exactly a week ago (last Tuesday) after an IM'ing conversation with Tinatsu about using imagery from strange places in stories. I got it all out in about four sessions over the course of the last week, including one marathon session tonight when I wrote the last 3200 words.

It's entirely possible that the result of all this is a totally incoherent muddle of a story, but I'm just so insanely grateful to have finally finished a new one....

It's been way too long, and it feels really good.