I have some author notes on the recently published “Salvage” up on the Electric Spec blog.
One of the things I didn’t dig into in those notes is that this is my first publication in about a decade. Yes, a decade. It’s not that I wasn’t writing at all during that time, but a combination of increasing professional demands, early parenthood, and a lack of clear creative goals meant I ended up with a lot of half-finished drafts that never went anywhere. “Salvage” helped break me out of that slump. By looking more closely at a genre I’ve always loved as a reader, I was able to challenge myself to explore my writing weaknesses (plotting, action) and bring a sense of play and pleasure back to my practice.
I liked writing “Salvage” so much that I wrote a sequel novelette with some of the same characters. Then I wrote a goofy novella about rival wizard apprentices in a locked room murder mystery. I began to write and write. Returning to the kinds of stories that made me into the voracious reader I am today reminded me why I started doing this in the first place.
My current short project has tilted back towards the slipstream gray area I’ve more commonly worked in, but I now feel more confident drawing from a constellation of commercial, experimental, and literary influences without worrying about where my stories fit. They’ll find their place eventually.
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