Commentary: This is Foolproof and This One-Sided Showdown

This is Foolproof

This One-Sided Showdown

Two for one!

...mainly because I ran out of time last week. Which is something of a shame, because This is Foolproof is probably the piece so far that needed the most editing...

This is Foolproof is a perfectly competent story. It is entirely adequate. Which is, of course, damning it with faint praise. It's not great, it's ok. This is the problem with publishing these stories in order, and writing so many on such a short time scale. Write the last word, move on. No thought to selection, a little brief thought to editing as I post.

Of course, these are short enough that sometimes 'as I post' is plenty of time.

This One-Sided Showdown also probably needed a little more editing. I like it much more as it stands, though; it does much more in a smaller space.

I tagged it superhero, but I don't really think the elites are superheroes in the traditional sense (spandex and perfect teeth), although they are obviously powered. DC calls them meta-humans, Wildstorm post-humans (which I like best I think), I'm not sure if Marvel has an overall term, nothing pops to mind.

Another interesting thing about all this is the potential for expansion in each of these. With This One-Sided Showdown I'm curious about what led to this point. There's a whole novel that could be written leading up to this reveal. One I wrote the other day (which you won't get to see for another couple of months, This Pale Stranger) is a kind of hundred years earlier prequel to another book in my head, and it could easily be a longer short story itself.

This is the effect I was trying to inspire in others, worlds beyond stories. Unfortunately it does mean that this morning I sit down to write and my head is full of stories I've already written...

I suppose one of the great things about publishing Xeroverse: Missing Pieces is that it's like the piles of notebooks I have, full of ideas. But instead of never seeing the light of day, all of these are here, even if they never make it to book or magazine.

-Xero