My darlings! Springtime is upon us! And it's my day off. So all is well indeed.

I'm trying to write a horror story today. I was given an opportunity to submit to an anthology, and it's an editor I love and have never worked with, so I want to write something good and dark and creepy and weird. I'm also trying not to write Kelly Link pastiche (because it can be really pathetic when someone who isn't Kelly tries to write like Kelly), despite that fact that her "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and "Stone Animals" (which I read for the first time yesterday) are still haunting me. She writes good strange dark stuff. I want to write good strange dark stuff, too, but in my own way.

I've had this idea for a story that has gone through a couple of misbegotten incarnations, each attempt yielding some good images but only wreckage as far as plot and characters go, but after some thought I think I've found the keystone linchpin idea that will hold the whole story together, so I'm working on it now. A couple of characters have risen from the effluvia. I'm not sure exactly how it ends, but these things usually occur to me in the course of my writing. The story has monsters, betrayal, and weirdness, among other things. So it could be good.

I've written about a page thus far, and haven't screwed it up yet! I'm going to spend a couple more hours working on it, then go out for lunch, then come home and finish it. That's the plan, anyway. I'm trying to keep it down to 5,000 or 6,000 words, so it should be possible to complete a draft today.

Then, then, it will be time to dive whole-brainedly into the Bridge novel for a month or so. I've promised a couple of other people stories, but they aren't due until summer and fall respectively, so I've got time yet.