December rolls round again and I’m still Writing. The big change in progress is that the story fragments that were simply called Dust have coalesced and extended to the point that I have had to split into chapters. This is a significant step, as short stories don’t have chapters in my world. Chapters mean a longer story and at the moment this one is 8000+ words and counting. Now entitled Thus Falls The Shadow, this will be a novella in all likelihood, maybe around 20,000 words. As you can see I have just started Chapter 6, in which our hero Will tries to escape from the the asteroid colony Zestrade where he and his partner/lover Rilk found a lot of dead bodies and some clues that will push them further on their journey through the Kwa system. With them are Drd (diminutive, three-armed, non-human pilot) and Bex (foul mouthed spacer-trash teenage girl who was the only survivor of the massacre on Zestrade).

It’s not particularly original but it’s not really meant to be. It’s basically Heart of Darkness set in space and it’s a lot of fun. I was bit surprised but also pleased when my main character turned out to be gay. I basically just let my characters lose and see what they do. This is probably not the most efficient way of writing but I’ve tried planning it out in detail and it just makes me bored. 

Also on the is the start of a short story called The Sign. Don’t know whether I’ll take it any further.

Oh yes, Happy Christmas to all.

M