Sunset at the End of Empire

My story is now available as part of Abandoned Towers #2! The adventures of Apollo Valerius Delphinius and his not-quite-perfectly-legal tactics are in black and white for all to see. And buy. You should probably buy two copies; one to cut up and laminate and the other to store in a hermetically sealed vault so fifty years from now you can sell it for a fortune.

(This post would have happened sooner but for the last two days I've been traveling to Hawai'i and Korea again.)

How to Stop an Overextended Metaphor In One Easy Step

You announce that March 1st will see the publication of one of your next stories.

Abandoned Towers Issue 2 will 'hit the stands' that day and it includes That First Roman Story called Sunset at the End of Empire. I received the .pdf this morning and I was pleasantly surprised by two things. First, the publisher put in an illustration to go with it, which is always fun. And Second, Bruce Durham also has a Roman Empire centered story in it. Today is a good day, and not only because I'm about to drive up to the North Shore of Oahu.

(Of course, if Return of the Sword is any indicator, Bruce's story will be better than mine.)

That Roman Story Finds a Home

Over the weekend I successfully sold "Sunset at the End of Empire" to a new market called Abandoned Towers. It is scheduled for their second print issue sometime next spring. This is a particularly satisfying sale because I really love These Roman Stories. They are great fun to write and to research. The hero, Apollo Valerius Delphinius, is a man who knows the end is coming and he will do what he must to preserve the good in order to benefit the future. Although the sun is setting on his empire, he knows the night that follows can be shortened.

Writing Milestone

I did a strange thing a few seconds ago. I sent an email to an editor with one of my stories under consideration and withdrew it. As some of you may know, The Roman Stories I've been working on have changed and changed again. The first of them is now stronger for it but is also several iterations away from what I sent out a few months ago. It's an odd thing for a barely published writer to say, but I feel that artistic control of these stories at this point is important. More important than the chance of publishing just because I want something published. So now, "Sunset at the End of Empire" is free to seek acceptance elsewhere. And that's not so strange.

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

You know, the more research I do on the last years of the Western Roman Empire the more I want to tweak the Roman stories I'm working on. There's another book that I think I have to get about the Barbarians of the time which posits that they weren't all that barbaric and they didn't really cause Rome to fall more than they just happened to be standing nearby when it dropped dead of a massive coronary infarction brought on by years of eating cheeseburgers and watching American Idol. (Or something like that.)

Semi-luckily for me, the adventures of Apollo Valerius Delphinius don't really depend on marauding Visigoths for their story arcs. I'm taking the position that the Empire fell mostly in part to internal weight that just couldn't keep up with a changing reality around them. Of course, in one story I've got a German with a bad attitude as villain but that is offset by an uber-patriot antagonist in the next. The plot for the third story is still a bit too fluid for me to assign bad guy duties yet. Needs more research, I guess.

Title Decision

I think I've come up with the final solution for the titles of These Roman Stories. (Thanks need to go out to Keanan Brand, who reminded me of things I already knew.) The three extant stories will be called:

Sunset at the End of Empire
Storm Clouds at the End of Empire
Fire and Blood at the End of Empire

'Fire and Blood' now has a thousand word opening scene that I rolled out this morning. It is set in Rome a few years after the second story and it contains angry mobs, angry priests, and angry Praetorian Guards. That, my friends, is the quickest way I know to get both fire and blood.

Advancement on Every Front Except a Title

That Second Roman Story Set Entirely In Greece has been molded into second draft form and is starting to look like a finished piece; or rather, a finished piece with no title. I've incorporated some most excellent advice and broadened the Meaning of the Story in a way that continues my examination of the end of an Empire. Still haven't heard anything back from Serpentarius about the first Roman story and now something is wrong with their website. I'm hoping everything works out OK, and by that I mean I hope I get an answer soon because if it's a rejection then the reading period for Paradox magazine is opening up in May.

On the third Roman story, I've got the basic scene list done and tonight I struck upon a couple of great ideas regarding plot and secondary characters. If done correctly, it could even lead to a fourth story. It seems that every time I start looking a few years down the line in Late Roman Imperial history I find another juicy fact that can form the basis of a plot.

Rough Draft Edges Closer to the Cliff

The rough draft for That Second Roman Story Set Entirely in Greece is dangerously close to committing suicide by throwing itself off the Cliff of First Draft Completion. Tomorrow morning I will have worked out the last scene and all remnants of its rough draftism will be gone. To mix my metaphors, I'm glad this one simmered as long as it did. It's coming together like a nice pot of chili instead of a microwaved Hot Pocket. But of course this means I have to come up with a title for it and that hasn't been easy with these Roman stories. I've also started outlining a Third Roman Story with our protagonist, Apollo Valerius Delphinius, and this one is Set Mostly If Not Entirely In Rome. Details will follow as they always do.

BTW, still nothing from Rhode Island. What's up with those guys?

Writing Lessons From Skipping the Middle

I was having a real problem with a middle scene in That Roman Story Set Entirely in Greece. Basically, I just flat out didn't know what I wanted it to say. It was one of the scenes that describes the 'why' of the other scenes. All this stuff is happening and the reader is being taken along for the ride but I always want some kind of revelatory scene in which the characters come to a sense of completion with the story. You know, the 'why.' Anyway, the scene was refusing to shape itself and I wrote a couple of weak attempts but wasn't happy with them. Then I decided to skip it and write the last scene. That's when it gelled. That's when I figured out what the middle needed to say. So when you're stuck with a scene that just isn't working, skip it and write the next scenes. Something will bubble up and answer the questions you couldn't answer before.

Another Writing Update

Busy week and weekend and now I'm in Kennewick on another sales trip. However, I did get a chance to try my hand at flash fiction this weekend. I put together a story of exactly 666 words in the rough draft (yeah, I thought that was interesting too) called 'Bleeding Grey.' It's a fantasy piece in the heroic vein that I currently favor. I'm not exactly sure if it fills all the criteria of a complete short story because right now it feels like quick scene within a larger work but at least I got through it.

In other news, That Second Roman Story Set Entirely in Greece still needs its last scene and I'm thinking about changing the direction I wanted it to go. That's next on the list to finish. Return of the Sword has its promotion page up and running and I'm excited to see how it turns out. Still no word from Serpentarius or Haruah regarding the stories sent to them. And that's it for now.

Back to Writing

So I got back to writing this weekend and added another scene to That Next Roman Story Which is Set Entirely in Greece. Our intrepid hero gets captured and interrogated by the antagonist in flashback. This style of going back and forth between two different times in the story is actually quite fun. In order to pull it off, I'm making sure that a question is formed in one scene and then answered in the next. Of course another question comes up and that gets answered back in the 'current story.' I've also got an antagonist that has his own special skill which comes in handy while tracking down wanted criminals. I'm up to 2600 words and I think there will be three more scenes before it is finished.

Ravages of Time

The next story I'm writing has got the certain-to-be-changed working title of 'Ravages of Time' simply because that's the first thing I thought of when I started it. It continues the adventures of Apollo Valerius Delphinius; my Greek, future-seeing, literary thief/collector, son of the last Oracle of Delphi. This story is written in the same flashback heavy style as the first, where I jump around in the timeline in order to build the tension of the tale.

The setting for this one will very likely be entirely in Greece ca. 400 AD. Right now I have the Isthmus of Corinth as the location for the 'current story' with flashbacks in Athens and Delphi. An interesting stumbling block that I've been running up against is the lack of good research material for Roman era Greece. It seems that most historical study has been focussed on either Ancient Greece (800 BC to maybe 200 BC) or the Italian peninsula for later Roman times. Then the literature seems to jump to the Byzantine period of 600 AD and later. This is forcing me to be a bit vague on the street scenes and to extrapolate from known Roman customs and hope they were in practice in Late Empire Greece. As always, the little things that make a story unique and interesting are the things that become the hardest. I spent half an hour searching for a city to have something shipped to. Each time I looked over a map and found a city that would fit the story a little bit of research would reveal "Nope, this place was destroyed by invaders in 395" or something like that. Anyhow, I'm 1200 words into it and enjoying the process so things aren't all that bad.

Discovering Deadlines

My search for a different market to send That Roman Story to led somewhere yesterday. I discovered an online magazine called Serpentarius. It looked good and I just couldn't resist the Latin connection. The only unexpected difficulty was that they were about to close the submission window on Monday. That meant the final edit needed to happen today. It did.

The story has been renamed "Exitus Lux Mundi" and is probably not conjugated correctly but I think it sounds catchy. Also, since another story with the same character has begun gathering notes on my laptop, this gives me a theme to hang future titles on: Partially Grammatical Pseudo Roman Phrases.

Market Search

Since Paradox is closed to new submissions I am looking for another place to send That Roman Story. (I'm thinking the title might end up being "Destiny's Collector" or something along those lines.) Ralan.com is a great resource but after scanning through several market listings I'm finding that there are some magazines that I just don't particularly care to be published in. I guess that is a self imposed limitation which is not in my best interest but some of these submission guidelines just make the magazine sound like no fun. A couple of them are so pretentious and condescending my first thought as I read them is, "Well, then screw you." After a bit of Christian reflection I usually temper that to a more sarcastic, "Yeah, OK, good luck with that." Anyhow, the search continues.

Sunday Morning Goals

All right, I've got some work to do tomorrow morning. I've got two stories on the verge of final draft and I need to get them in shape for submissions next week. That Roman story has been reviewed by both my wife and my very good friend from across the pond. It feels good and just needs some smoothing. "The Battle of Raven Kill" needs a touch more work but I know what elements I need to add so it shouldn't be too difficult to finish. Then I need to target them and fire away. I wrote that Roman story with Paradox in mind but they still have "Such Great Faith" under consideration so I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do. "The Battle of Raven Kill" will be sent to Flashing Swords. That will make three stories out on the submission circuit; more than I've ever had before.

I think I might be getting the hang of this writing thing.

Just Like That II

And so just like that I'm finished with the rough draft of this new Roman Empire story. This weekend we packed up and went down to my mom's cabin in Long Beach. My first morning there the story snapped into place, the characters firmed up, and about 1700 words flowed like oil from Saudi sand. Now I have to fix the beginning where I was floundering around and waiting for a story to appear.

I love it when the writing comes this easy because those times are few and far between. I was practically giddy when I typed in the last words. I really like how it turned out. Not only that, it freed up the rest of the weekend to play Civilization IV.

Just Like That

And just like that I'm in Barnes & Noble last night and I see a new book called Decline and Fall. It's about the downward spiral that Europe finds itself in today after hundreds of years of ruling the entire world. So now I will have to find a new working title that I can change at a later date. "The Roman Story" just doesn't do it for me but that might have to stick for a while.