Finding Lost Things

But what shall I talk about with no story to launch the discussion off!?

As I was publishing (blogging?) most of the first chapter of Missing Pieces I already had the rest written. So my week would go something like: post/edit/commentary/blog/edit/post and so on. Since for the past few weeks I've been writing the next chapter this quite chilled pace has been disrupted. It's been post/write/edit/write/write/write/write/write and so on. So my SF blog and other endeavours fall by the wayside a little.

I don't mind. I love writing. That's kind of the point. I don't mind if I never do this for money (although, you know...), I mostly want to tell stories. That does of course mean I want people to read my work, and like it... I want to tell the stories to someone. The larger the audience, the better... one day, maybe.

In the meantime. I'll just keep myself and my friends entertained. =)

So I'm just about to start publishing the next chapter of Missing Pieces. It's about half written, a little more than, which makes it different to the first chapter which was pretty much finished when I started. I'm also picking the order in which they're published, instead of the first chapter which was in the order they were written (except for a couple of festive concessions). There's a really good mix (I think), of genres and lengths and styles. There's some more fanciful, playful pieces, some serious fantasy, some heavy SF... it's gonna be fun. ;D

One of the things that (hopefully) you'll see coming through in the later half of this chapter is a major influence on my life... Roald Dahl. I read all of the kids' books when I was younger, but I'm just now reading some of his adult stories, some of his Unexpected Tales. I can't believe I managed to do a creative writing degree and was never made to read these. They are, for the most part, so well handled; the characterisation, pacing and plot development are superb. And taking the obvious twist, nodding at it and passing it by... is brilliant. If you like short fiction, you should read them.