I Like To Ride My Bicycle

February 7, again

Hello, lovelies! I'm in a much better mood today. The internal barometers are falling, and the storm warnings have proven much exaggerated, and the clouds are breaking up.

I sold a poem, "The God of the Crossroads," to Strange Horizons. This is the rewrite request I mentioned a few days ago-- after a little tweaking, the esteemed editors and myself were both quite pleased with the piece. The poem should appear in March. It was the first of my "Forking Paths" pieces-- since I wrote this poem, I've written two stories, "The Scent of Copper Pennies" and "Jen at the Crossroads" that address basically the same theme from different perspectives (and that feature, in various guises, the god of the crossroads, the opener of the way, the lord of forking paths).

This sale makes me happy, because this is a new poem, so perhaps I haven't totally lost my ability to write decent verse.

Elsewise, let's see... I thought about writing my bathtub story tonight, and the idea didn't appeal at all. I pretty much have the information I needed, thanks to mom, but it's going to be a dark, oppressive story of madness and desperation and good intentions gone disastrously awry... and I was just in too good a mood to write something like that tonight. I didn't want to descend into that kind of pit. So I looked over my other openings, trying to find one that could become a relatively light story, maybe one with a little romance....

Man. A couple of them are going to be romances, sure, but they'll be dark and bloody ones. All the openings I wrote for this Dare are really dark, actually-- nary a prospect for something fun and light. But, after a little thought, I decided to write the Bicycle story-- you know, the one that begins "Even her bicycle was evil." Because while that's hardly a cheerful opening, the story ideas that occurred to me from that beginning were not steeped in blood and misery. I had weird ideas, but not horrific ones.

I wrote a good little bit on that story tonight, and it's one of those dread beasts, a short story with multiple viewpoints. A little bit from the antagonist's p.o.v., most of it from the protagonist. I really like the story so far-- it's quirky, and it could be quite good, if I handle it well. The story features a rather unusual sorceress, erudite bullies, references to films of the 1940's, and, of course, a bicycle.

Oh-- and it is, indeed, a romance. Quite a sweet romance, in its way.

Total Word Count: 11,798

Today's Word Count: 2,438

The Daring Darlings:

Jim C. Hines

Hilary Moon Murphy

Nicole Montgomery

Melanie Miller Fletcher

Karina Summer Smith

Anne Hutchins