Quoted

Just for grins, I searched for my name on Amazon.com, and it turns out I show up in the index of two books. So I bought them. One of them just mentions me along with the other Rogue creators, but the other, Twisty Little Passages by Nick Montfort, actually has a paragraph quoted from my Brief History of Rogue. The book looks pretty interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading it.

But wow, this Nick Montfort guy. In 2002, he wrote a tale, called 2002, which contains 2002 words exactly. And the whole story is a palindrome. I'm just in awe. Given the incredible constraints he laid out for himself, the story is remarkably coherent.

I mean, okay, it doesn't seem all that coherent at first blush. You have to twist your brain around to accept the awkward syntax. But, there's an actual story with characters and things that happen, and there's an introduction and a conclusion. The story is about how the year 2002 played out for our hero, Bob. If I pull this creative triathlon off completely, it still will not be as cool as Nick's story.

Go look at it!

The Name The Short Story Contest

Okay, for the two of you reading my blog... :)

As promised, I have uploaded a short story I wrote back in aught-four. It's not my best story, but that's what you get for free.

It's about 2600 words, which is just a bit more than I will need to write every single day in November for NaNoWriMo (gack!)

I realized as I dug up the file (off the hard drive of my old computer), that I never gave this story a name.

So, read it, comment on it, and help me come up with a name for it!

Here is the link: http://www.babelsphere.com/7dayquest/story/ThunderBay.html

Writing

I could write 50,000 words.

No I couldn't

Yes I could.

If you put together all the fiction I've written in the last five years, it wouldn't amount to 50,000 words. 10,000 words for "One Bad Thing". 5,000 words for "The Road Song", and two or three shorter stories of 2,000 words or so.

They're good words, though. High quality words. Each one lovingly prepared and simmered to perfection.

I haven't written any fiction since 2004. But, I have done some writing... an account of our time in New Orleans... a blurb about our home group for the church newsletter... just this evening I wrote a techie article about using javascript to write roguelikes (a subject about which, you'll have to admit, I am a relative expert).

And there's this blog. If blogging is writing. Blogging might just be blogging. I dunno.

Hmm. I take that back -- I have written some fiction recently -- the backstory to the Seven Day Quest.

Clearly I need to exercise my fiction muscles! Time for a new story. Maybe about the Natchez Trace.

If anyone adds a comment to this post asking for it, then I'll put one of my short stories up on the web, so you can see what I'm talking about.

No point in doing that if I'm just talking to myself, though.