Publishing: "Dawn"
I've gone and published my next short story, "Dawn," over at Smashwords.
I have to thank Jasper Golangco for granting me persmission to use his photograph as the cover image for this story (the picture refuses to transfer over from Angelfire correctly, but you can see it there). Who knew that when I punched "crucifix" and "windshield" into Google Images, this absolutely perfect picture would be literally the first photo to appear? In turn, I contacted him through rgbstock.com free stock photos.
The story of this story is probably as long as the story itself. I originally wrote it under the title of "The Night Before" for submission to a quarterly magazine called Not One of Us, which describes its mission as "consider[ing] the problem of 'otherness'." I believe the phrase I used in my cover letter went something like: "as an ardent atheist in the American South, I am on a first-name basis with the concept of otherness."
That original story was one of my infamous conversation-stories, which amount to two people sitting (or in this case, standing) and talking for six pages. In this case, it was my main character, Adam Westing, and a door-to-door prosthelytizer who wound up in a theological argument at Westing's door. That story was rejected, and rightly so. It was dry and polemic, and only technically qualified as a story in the first place. So I did was Dean Wesley Smith calls a redraft: I scrapped the manuscript and went back to the idea. A skeptic in a world of believers.
There's plenty of conflict between the religious and the irreligious. But making it into a story worth reading proved a little more difficult than I imagined. It didn't really come together for me until I realized that the outward conflict between the believer and the nonbeliever pales in comparison to the inward conflict that the nonbeliever experiences. The paradox of wanting to belong to a society that disparages and distrusts him, even while he himself finds aspects of that society objectionable.
Really, the story of an atheist in a land of the faithful is just another version of that same essential story of a man trying to find his place in the world. Trying to find a balance between who he is and who society expects him to be. And once I got the idea turned around in that direction, the redraft was easy. It wasn't Man vs. Man anymore, or even Man vs. Society. The latter is certainly present, but only insofar as it serves the true conflict of the story, which became Man vs. Self.
The first conception of the redraft had the same character of Adam Westing, in his profession as a high school teacher, trying to calm an apparently suicidal student on a rooftop. The Man vs. Man conflict was transferred from Westing to his student, who was not an atheist herself but who was the victim of religiously-inspired intolerance. Her crisis culminated in a rejection of theological faith, which she blamed for her classmates atrocious behavior, and Westing succeeded in pacifying her by intimating the secret of his own atheism. In the end, after his student discarded a personal item of religious significance, Westing picked up the item with the intention of keeping it in case his student changed her mind about her faith sometime later.
I never actually wrote that draft of the idea. Mostly, I didn't like shifting the primary conflict that far away from my main character. I wanted Westing to deal with the bulk of his own Man vs. Self without that much interence from the external conflicts of other characters. So I conceived the narrative as it now exists, and I think I managed to find the best story to deliver this idea. There is an element now of Man vs. Destiny to some degree as well, but like Man vs. Society, it exists to serve Westing's internal conflict.
"Dawn" is rather shorter than the last story I published, "Out of Joint" (now just at Smashwords), at 3,284 words, but it's a personal kind of story for me on a more philosophical level. Make of that what you will. Hope you enjoy, and I welcome all feedback and reviews, positive or negative. And if you like it, pass it on.
"Dawn" is only available at Smashwords now that "After/Thought" has been published. And as of October 7th, the story is approved for inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog, meaning that it will automatically be distributed to major online retailers including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson Australia, Whitcoulls, the Diesel eBook Store, and eBooks Eros.
I have to thank Jasper Golangco for granting me persmission to use his photograph as the cover image for this story (the picture refuses to transfer over from Angelfire correctly, but you can see it there). Who knew that when I punched "crucifix" and "windshield" into Google Images, this absolutely perfect picture would be literally the first photo to appear? In turn, I contacted him through rgbstock.com free stock photos.
The story of this story is probably as long as the story itself. I originally wrote it under the title of "The Night Before" for submission to a quarterly magazine called Not One of Us, which describes its mission as "consider[ing] the problem of 'otherness'." I believe the phrase I used in my cover letter went something like: "as an ardent atheist in the American South, I am on a first-name basis with the concept of otherness."
That original story was one of my infamous conversation-stories, which amount to two people sitting (or in this case, standing) and talking for six pages. In this case, it was my main character, Adam Westing, and a door-to-door prosthelytizer who wound up in a theological argument at Westing's door. That story was rejected, and rightly so. It was dry and polemic, and only technically qualified as a story in the first place. So I did was Dean Wesley Smith calls a redraft: I scrapped the manuscript and went back to the idea. A skeptic in a world of believers.
There's plenty of conflict between the religious and the irreligious. But making it into a story worth reading proved a little more difficult than I imagined. It didn't really come together for me until I realized that the outward conflict between the believer and the nonbeliever pales in comparison to the inward conflict that the nonbeliever experiences. The paradox of wanting to belong to a society that disparages and distrusts him, even while he himself finds aspects of that society objectionable.
Really, the story of an atheist in a land of the faithful is just another version of that same essential story of a man trying to find his place in the world. Trying to find a balance between who he is and who society expects him to be. And once I got the idea turned around in that direction, the redraft was easy. It wasn't Man vs. Man anymore, or even Man vs. Society. The latter is certainly present, but only insofar as it serves the true conflict of the story, which became Man vs. Self.
The first conception of the redraft had the same character of Adam Westing, in his profession as a high school teacher, trying to calm an apparently suicidal student on a rooftop. The Man vs. Man conflict was transferred from Westing to his student, who was not an atheist herself but who was the victim of religiously-inspired intolerance. Her crisis culminated in a rejection of theological faith, which she blamed for her classmates atrocious behavior, and Westing succeeded in pacifying her by intimating the secret of his own atheism. In the end, after his student discarded a personal item of religious significance, Westing picked up the item with the intention of keeping it in case his student changed her mind about her faith sometime later.
I never actually wrote that draft of the idea. Mostly, I didn't like shifting the primary conflict that far away from my main character. I wanted Westing to deal with the bulk of his own Man vs. Self without that much interence from the external conflicts of other characters. So I conceived the narrative as it now exists, and I think I managed to find the best story to deliver this idea. There is an element now of Man vs. Destiny to some degree as well, but like Man vs. Society, it exists to serve Westing's internal conflict.
"Dawn" is rather shorter than the last story I published, "Out of Joint" (now just at Smashwords), at 3,284 words, but it's a personal kind of story for me on a more philosophical level. Make of that what you will. Hope you enjoy, and I welcome all feedback and reviews, positive or negative. And if you like it, pass it on.
"Dawn" is only available at Smashwords now that "After/Thought" has been published. And as of October 7th, the story is approved for inclusion in the Smashwords Premium Catalog, meaning that it will automatically be distributed to major online retailers including Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Borders Australia and Angus & Robertson Australia, Whitcoulls, the Diesel eBook Store, and eBooks Eros.