How are the WIPs going?
I managed to pass 10K words on my dragon hunters story. I think it's coming along nicely. I'm really enjoying my characters and am looking forward to getting back to working on it. Strangely enough, I've been finding Robert W. Chambers' work is having a strong influence on my themes; though, if I think about it, "In Search of the Unknown" was already fairly similar. I'm letting it happen because I like the direction it's going; it's just that I didn't plan it out this way originally. Still, I think this story is turning out rather well.
My Eden story too; I've been working on editing mostly. I'm hoping to publish it soon, by which I mean, in a few years. I'm trying to juggle editing two different parts at the moment: one is the first part, "Storm of Monsters," which is basically ready to send, and the other is the latest part I've written, part four, with the working title "The Crimes of Rick." I can't tell you how many times I've read through "Storm of Monsters" or how many editors I've hired to look it over, and in contrast to that, this is my first read through of "The Crimes of Rick." Refinement is a slow process. Hopefully, when these start coming out, they'll find an audience.
Getting back to Chambers, though; I finished his book, "The Mystery of Choice," this week. In all truth, I'd mostly finished it months ago, but the penultimate story in the collection was one that appeared in "In Search of the Unknown," and so I had already read it. It is sappy and frustrating, and it was a drag to read again, though it did provide some insight, I think, into Chambers's most enigmatic character. "The Mystery of Choice," like his book, "The King in Yellow," opens with interconnected stories that have a wonderfully eerie bent to them, though the first story is devoid, unless I'm missing something, of anything mystical or ethereal. It's actually a simple murder mystery, but it concurrently feels like a fable or myth.
If you've enjoyed "The King in Yellow," I'd strongly suggest giving "The Mystery of Choice" a shot. It's not as dark, but it has a sort of friendly-Halloween vibe in the first few stories that I really loved. I wish Chambers had written just one more story with the characters in the opening (discounting the poems, I think there's only three) to wrap it all up. As it stands, it feels like an unfinished sentence or a dream interrupted.
Anyway. That's been my week. Let me know how your WIPs are going. What are you working on? Are you editing? Outlining? Writing? Let me know.
