While I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it...neither do all professional writers...someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. When I started this blog, that was NOT true, so I may have reached a point where my own advice is reasonably good. We shall see! Hemingway’s quote above will now remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales.
Faulkner once wrote, “The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.” And Tea Obreht thought that “The best fiction stays with you and changes you.” These are my goals…
With those last two sentences in mind, I’d like to announce my most recent published story!
After a long, long drought in which it didn’t seem I could sell my stories; nor could I (to be perfectly frank) GIVE them away, you can read my most recent story here:
http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/08/doctor-to-undead-by-guy-stewart.html
This is one of “those stories”. There was NO blood-letting (pun intended), sweating, or weeping. I had the idea, set my fingers to the keyboard, and the story just poured out. When I was done, I had to tweak a few things – like I put in a couple more Easter Eggs for DRACULA fans, and I fiddled with the ending, but in fact, I was pretty much ready to submit about two hours after I was doing writing!
Sixteen hundred words of flash fiction, and there was complete story there. As well, it had back story and future story hanging in the first page and after the last page. This is how it started.
A friend of mine (and editor of Stupefying Stories (both online and on paper) and co-owner of Rampant Loon Press, and author of HEADCRASH, and inventor of…well, you get the idea!) was reporting from the hospital on his wife, who is struggling with metastatic breast cancer (for a blog entry on my OTHER blog, GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT Breast Cancer & Alzheimer’s, you can go here…).
Normally, though he’s an ardent dog person, he also likes cats (we have that in common!) and posts pictures of cats. He was tired of cats and so posted the picture along with the comment, “In the meantime, I’ve grown tired of cat pics, so here’s a cute Halloween illo that I picked up with no clear idea of how I would use it. Maybe it will inspire you. Does someone feel like writing a story to match this art?”
It WAS funny, and I figured maybe I could play it for laughs. But after several minutes of noodling, I realized that the woman in the illustration was far more than she appeared to be. She was a doctor – a research doctor – working with blood. And she wasn’t just any doctor, she’d earned her degree the hard way and she’d earned it in the 21st Century. She’d placed herself at a research hospital not far from where I live…
So, what went RIGHT with this story?
Pretty much everything.
Genetics was my favorite class while doing my major in Biology, and I’ve followed the LEAPS forward since 1981 when I graduated – which was long before the completion of the Human Genome Project (“It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. Planning started after the idea was picked up in 1984 by the US government, the project formally launched in 1990, and was declared complete on April 14, 2003. Level ‘complete genome’ was achieved in May 2021.”
I’m also fascinated by the idea of an artificial uterus. Lois McMaster Bujold, a local science fiction author with international fame, based her entire VORKOSIGAN SAGA on exactly two SF tropes. One has been used by (I’m guessing) almost every SF writer worth-their-salt, and that is some form of Faster Than Light drive. Bujold uses wormhole hopping, but her entire series is predicated on the colonization of a planet called Barrayar losing contact with Earth and presumed lost. It also lost its ability to travel through space. Honestly? That was pretty much a trope.
What she postulated though, was that the universe outside of Barrayar had invented the uterine replicator. The main character married and had a child by a major political figure. Then, the child was threatened and had to be placed in a replicator in order to save both him and his mother’s life…thus the entire series was born because of a technology we don’t currently have. At least not totally.
So, MY character is part of a team working to create a permanent, safe, and replicable blood supply. She and her co-worker are successful, and they go out to celebrate. But Dr. Zalissia is not Human…
At any rate, the story involved creating biological blood bags where not only could any Type be grown, it could be grown with no fear of contamination. (My brother-in-law died of liver failure because his life had been extended repeatedly as part of the University of Minnesota’s research into cures for AIDS. He was a hemophiliac and had contracted AIDS through tainted blood in a routine transfusion…)
I wrote the story with passion; I have something of a sense of humor (and I also have a thing for “chick-flicks”, and so I piled all of the above into this one little story.
Oh, and I twisted the end. Even her colleague Dr. Cramer didn’t see it coming.
Lucky for Dr. Zalissia; lucky for her people.
At any rate this was one of those rare moments where EVERYTHING worked just right and Bruce took the story a few hours later – NOT with an email acceptance, but a personal phone call!
Maybe the rest will be history. We’ll see. Read it and let me know what you think.
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSLS-zddrGG14QSttDNh-6fx3dk_ba-vkrloZmcYnWHYCu_Zxr9r08IKpQjFTYysDFRmUGZbObCvoOyTr5otM2t2eRXd-i-PlOHkZC1ZNOcJ8PRp1WBkNZceG0-AKEkE3KNovmx0fQcZ_/w640-h626/AdobeStock_9191806.jpeg
After a long, long drought in which it didn’t seem I could sell my stories; nor could I (to be perfectly frank) GIVE them away, you can read my most recent story here:
http://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/2021/08/doctor-to-undead-by-guy-stewart.html
This is one of “those stories”. There was NO blood-letting (pun intended), sweating, or weeping. I had the idea, set my fingers to the keyboard, and the story just poured out. When I was done, I had to tweak a few things – like I put in a couple more Easter Eggs for DRACULA fans, and I fiddled with the ending, but in fact, I was pretty much ready to submit about two hours after I was doing writing!
Sixteen hundred words of flash fiction, and there was complete story there. As well, it had back story and future story hanging in the first page and after the last page. This is how it started.
A friend of mine (and editor of Stupefying Stories (both online and on paper) and co-owner of Rampant Loon Press, and author of HEADCRASH, and inventor of…well, you get the idea!) was reporting from the hospital on his wife, who is struggling with metastatic breast cancer (for a blog entry on my OTHER blog, GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT Breast Cancer & Alzheimer’s, you can go here…).
Normally, though he’s an ardent dog person, he also likes cats (we have that in common!) and posts pictures of cats. He was tired of cats and so posted the picture along with the comment, “In the meantime, I’ve grown tired of cat pics, so here’s a cute Halloween illo that I picked up with no clear idea of how I would use it. Maybe it will inspire you. Does someone feel like writing a story to match this art?”
It WAS funny, and I figured maybe I could play it for laughs. But after several minutes of noodling, I realized that the woman in the illustration was far more than she appeared to be. She was a doctor – a research doctor – working with blood. And she wasn’t just any doctor, she’d earned her degree the hard way and she’d earned it in the 21st Century. She’d placed herself at a research hospital not far from where I live…
So, what went RIGHT with this story?
Pretty much everything.
Genetics was my favorite class while doing my major in Biology, and I’ve followed the LEAPS forward since 1981 when I graduated – which was long before the completion of the Human Genome Project (“It remains the world's largest collaborative biological project. Planning started after the idea was picked up in 1984 by the US government, the project formally launched in 1990, and was declared complete on April 14, 2003. Level ‘complete genome’ was achieved in May 2021.”
I’m also fascinated by the idea of an artificial uterus. Lois McMaster Bujold, a local science fiction author with international fame, based her entire VORKOSIGAN SAGA on exactly two SF tropes. One has been used by (I’m guessing) almost every SF writer worth-their-salt, and that is some form of Faster Than Light drive. Bujold uses wormhole hopping, but her entire series is predicated on the colonization of a planet called Barrayar losing contact with Earth and presumed lost. It also lost its ability to travel through space. Honestly? That was pretty much a trope.
What she postulated though, was that the universe outside of Barrayar had invented the uterine replicator. The main character married and had a child by a major political figure. Then, the child was threatened and had to be placed in a replicator in order to save both him and his mother’s life…thus the entire series was born because of a technology we don’t currently have. At least not totally.
So, MY character is part of a team working to create a permanent, safe, and replicable blood supply. She and her co-worker are successful, and they go out to celebrate. But Dr. Zalissia is not Human…
At any rate, the story involved creating biological blood bags where not only could any Type be grown, it could be grown with no fear of contamination. (My brother-in-law died of liver failure because his life had been extended repeatedly as part of the University of Minnesota’s research into cures for AIDS. He was a hemophiliac and had contracted AIDS through tainted blood in a routine transfusion…)
I wrote the story with passion; I have something of a sense of humor (and I also have a thing for “chick-flicks”, and so I piled all of the above into this one little story.
Oh, and I twisted the end. Even her colleague Dr. Cramer didn’t see it coming.
Lucky for Dr. Zalissia; lucky for her people.
At any rate this was one of those rare moments where EVERYTHING worked just right and Bruce took the story a few hours later – NOT with an email acceptance, but a personal phone call!
Maybe the rest will be history. We’ll see. Read it and let me know what you think.
Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsSLS-zddrGG14QSttDNh-6fx3dk_ba-vkrloZmcYnWHYCu_Zxr9r08IKpQjFTYysDFRmUGZbObCvoOyTr5otM2t2eRXd-i-PlOHkZC1ZNOcJ8PRp1WBkNZceG0-AKEkE3KNovmx0fQcZ_/w640-h626/AdobeStock_9191806.jpeg
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