She’s reading “One Fell Swoop”
Last week I distributed DargonZine 17-2, which contained “Sweet Healing”, a story that I co-authored with P. Atchley. Actually, it was more a case of my adopting the story, with her permission, when she took a sabbatical from the group. Her initial draft was a little rough, but had the kernel of a touching character sketch, which appealed to me, even though I usually prefer not to use a female point of view character. So I polished the story up and it appeared in our new issue. I can’t say it’s a work to rival my best, but I think it accomplishes what I was trying to do with it.
Although it’s not exclusively my work, it is something of a milestone for me. Although my twenty years as editor of our collaborative writing project has given me a lot of insight into what makes good writing, I still find it incredibly difficult to find the time to sit down and bring my visions to life. When I returned to DargonZine as a writer in 1993 after an extended absence, I promptly printed three stories, including one of my favorites: the two-part “Love an Adventure”. But in 1994 I reassumed the job of editor, and “Sweet Healing” is only my second story in the intervening ten years.
That’s a pretty frustrating record for someone who considers themselves a writer. The good news is that I’ve got another two-part story nearing completion, as part of our immense forthcoming 24-story, nine-author collaborative story arc, and that’s given me back some of the confidence I’d lost over the years.
So hopefully “Sweet Healing” is only the first of a number of stories I’ll have printed in coming years. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve exercised what I consider my primary artistic outlet, and I’m really hopeful that this change will stick.
If you want, you can check “Sweet Healing” out here. If you do read it, I’d be curious to hear your reactions to it.
If you’re really masochistic, you can find a list of all my Dargon stories on my author bio page. The recent ones, which are linked from that page, are really the only ones I could possibly recommend reading, except for the older “Legend in the Making”, which can be found here.