Dribs & Drabs ...

Hello Grups and Cool Kids!

Did you see? I finally put up one of my short stories :) This one, The Bounty Hunter, began life as part of my application to the 1984 Clarion Workshop for Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, held in East Lansing, MI. My application was a bit late in being sent, and arrived on the doorstep of R. Glenn Wright, the Workshop Director for that year, at - as he put it - "the 11th hour". It was still within the deadline (barely), but there wasn't time to send it around to the Writers who'd be working with the newbies that year, so they could weigh in on it (which was the usual process). So Glenn made the call himself, which was his perogative. Would I have made the cut if the Writers had a say in accepting my application? Who knows? But Glenn decided there was enough merit in my little story to approve my application. Now, when it was time for that story to be workshopped by the other participants and the current Writer for that week, it was eviscerated by pretty much everybody - and rightly so. Biggest complaint was that it was a thinly disguised Western (and not even a Space Opera), with only a few elements of science fiction tacked on. Which was true. Most people liked the bit of a twist at the ending though, so there was that.

Many years later, in 2010, I did a full revision of the story for a Writer's Forum I had been a member of. I changed the POV character from male to female, and made that character the "bounty hunter", instead of the person the hunter was hunting. I also put it firmly into my own sf universe, and tried to give it a meaningful "theme".

Was I successful at making it more SF? I think so. Are you intrigued enough by the premise of this sf universe to want more stories that take place in it? I hope so! As for that Forum I'd posted it to - common concensus was that the ending was bit too shmaltzy. What do you think?

Interested in learning more about my Clarion experience? Let me know :) I'll be happy to oblige!

And now it's back to editing BLP-bk the First ... chat with you later!