Tuesday, August 23, 2005

WIP

I rather like this bit.

"A man could run as long as there was land under his feet, solid ground on which his falling-apart boots could thud, where he collapsed in exhaustion, before getting up and running again. He could ride in the crowded trains, in unbearable stench, being eaten alive by lice. The problem arose when he found himself at the shore of a sea, with nothing but waves from here to the horizon. When there was no more land, there was nothing left but to fall from the abrupt precipice of its edge.

It was his punishment, Obolenskiy supposed, for having lived wrong; he had never felt the country underneath him, and now he had none. No university, Sechenov or Wittgenstein were going to change that.

He had lost his rifle a long while ago, somewhere between his battalion and his epaulettes. The latter seemed superfluous, and he tore them off, like scabs off an old wound. Not to avoid recognition – that was impossible; who couldn't tell a White army officer a mile away? – but to expose his hurt, his failure to belong. He tossed the limp cloth wings on the beach, and sat down, hugging his knees to his chest, flicking one pebble after another into the deep water of the Black Sea."

Friday, August 12, 2005

Somewhere in Arkansas...

... there is a person reading my book. I was searching libraries, to see who carried my book -- since it is designed for the library market. Found a new one today, in Arkansas. And Crow was checked out. It gave me a great rush of warm fuzzies. Thank you for reading my book, whoever you are.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

It's August already...

... and I'm still buried in work, with no hope of digging out before September. Chipping away at Transomniac, but slowly. Also, it occurred to me that this particular story would be better off as a long novella/short novel, so now the nifty progress bar looks like this:

Zokutou word meterZokutou word meter
33,000 / 40,000
(82.0%)


Yeah. I like that. Overall, I noticed that I'm starting to tend toward brevity. I don't think I'm even capable of producing a short story over 6,000 words anymore. Haven't decided whether it's a bad or a good thing.