Well, I’ve put my first short story up for free on
Smashwords.com, and I feel pretty good about that. I have written ever since I was old enough to
know which end of the pencil not to stick up my nose. (Turns out it’s both. Who knew?)
But before I completed The Affair of the Atil Artifact, I had never
actually finished any story I had ever started to write. That’s changing, now. I’m not precisely certain what it was, but
something has given me more focus, and I am concentrating. I used to just write bits and pieces of
stories and then say to myself: “Meh, connect them together later.” But the problem there is that it turns out
that my plots tend to develop as I write, and so the bits and pieces I write
here-and-there wind up not belonging to the story on which I’m working. I’m sure every other writer has a similar
problem: dozens if not hundreds of little story-snippets on sheets of paper or
word processing files, fugitives from the aether of the imagination, given form
but no function, waiting to belong. I
always feel like I owe those pieces; I brought them into the world, and I need
to find a place for them. And I
will. Eventually.
But Affair of the Atil Artifact was not like that. No, I sat down one day, a light-bulb clicked
on, and then I was off! I churned out
the full story in about a day and a half, and then spent months going through
it, cleaning it up, making it make sense.
I hope you enjoy it, and be sure to check back soon for the ongoing
adventures of the British Museum’s Division of Curious Devices and Remarkable
Artifacts!
