Well, just turned in my horror short story, THE SHAKEN LEAF, complete at 5300 words. The title is taken from this very mangled biblical quote from Leviticus “and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth“.
The premise is an interesting one, one I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years, and is my attempt to generate a completely original monster not based on tropes from any established mythology. I got tired of reading about zombies and vampires (even in pro mags like ChiZine), and wondered why there weren’t more original monsters in modern storytelling. Usually, when I ask myself, “Why doesn’t X exist?” that’s a cue for me to write one. Thus, “The Shaken Leaf” was born, though I’m thinking of retitling it “As From the Sword” since that has a better ring to it.
This piece gave me a lot of hassles, and I have to admit that I’m not entirely satisified with it. At one point, I found myself writing a “power up” point for my fleeing hereos, complete with medkits. It is not good to find yourself slipping into video game tropes. Ended up scrapping that scene completely and tightening the chase, so I suppose it may work now, but it’s far from my best work. What’s worse is that I don’t think it will sell. It’s an action horror, not a psychological one (though I hope it works on that level as well), and magazines seldom buy these pieces. Their reasoning? “Why isn’t this a movie?”. And I think they’re right too. I wrote this piece, in part, so try and develop the idea for eventual script treatment. Only time will tell there.
Next week I’m going back to what I hope is my strong suit: character-driven urban fantasy with a tasty sci-fi dressing. Structually, it’s a huge experiment, but I guess I’m thinking of it as a Hail Mary. If it works, I expect it to work big. If it doesn’t, well, I still like the idea, so maybe I’ll tackle it again with a more traditional format.
Nalo’s been great so far and I’m looking forward to my private interview with her on Thursday. For tonight, I might try and rent True Romance for the CW crew, or perhaps just outline my newest piece with the horrible, horrible working title of “Pruning the Tree”. No, it is not about landscaping.
Thanks to everyone who’s been commenting. I haven’t had time to answer a lot of you, but I appreciate you guys. This is much easier with a cheering section!