And return.

Oh, crap, I have a blog. o_O

Just to set the record straight, I have NOT spent the entire week sulking. I pretty much expended all of my sulkage over the weekend, and since then I've been busy with various projects. Some of you may not believe me, but that's really none of my concern.

Stuff that has been consuming my time:

1) Octane. Yes, Octane. After I'd cooled down, I was able to see how some people might feel it had an abrupt ending, so I've been thinking about how to address that. The advice I've gotten about it seems to boil down to "Throw in more stuff at the beginning of the last chapter so that the audience knows the narrator has tried everything he can think of instead of having what appears to be a colossal leap of logic."

Yeah, I could do that. But being 100% honest with you... I don't want to. Which means that if I did write it, there would be no passion to it. It would stink of "Here, you bastards, this is what you want, fine, I hope you choke on it." Maybe later, after I've gotten distance from it, I'd be willing to revisit certain parts of it, but not now.

Then there's the ending. Sigh. I know people aren't happy about it, but that's how the story first came to me, you know? "Bloodthirsty car takes Communion, is Cured." It's derived from John 4:13-14 :

¹³ Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

I thought this was a great ending, not because I wanted to push a particular religious agenda but because it seemed both theologically/philosophically sound and because no one would ever see it coming. And I succeeded on that last part, at the least.

But I've been talking to horror aficionados, and apparently they want the narrator to suffer more, to go through hell first. Part of that is addressed above, with my reluctance to pad the story; the other part is how the ending is perceived as too pat and easy.

Really, at this point there's only one compromise I'd be willing to make: the narrator attempts to feed the Eucharist to the car; car perceives this as a poisoning attempt, attacks narrator; narrator is eaten by car, but by virtue of having also taken communion before this, is currently in a State of Grace; therefore narrator doesn't die, but his spirit drives out the demon/curse/whatever in the Yellow Peril; narrator finds happiness as immortal, indestructible car for the church, who only needs to take Communion every so often instead of going to the gas station/mechanic.

If this is something people want, I'd be happy to do that as an alternate ending. Let me know by comment or e-mail, and if I get a half-dozen or more requests, I'll write it for you.


2) 30 Days of Fiction. Yeah, that's kind of fallen by the wayside. I was delayed by the election, and then I wanted to enjoy my weekend, and then I got mad...

So here's what I intend to do. Clearly, November is looking like a bit of a bust, but I really don't want to admit defeat on this (NaNoMo writers, you know what I mean by this) so instead I offer a compromise: Before the year is out, you'll have had a month's worth of fiction.

I can't promise this. I may in fact fail utterly at it. But I'm trying, dammit.


3). Commissions. Yes, there's at least one person out there who has hired me to write private stories for them, and frankly, my finances are in such a crappy state (as are a lot of people's, I suspect) that when it comes to either writing for free, on my blog, or writing something that will give me actual money... well, that's a no-brainer right there. I've promised my patron that one of these stories will be ready by Thanksgiving, so that clearly takes priority.


At any rate, if you're a regular reader, I thank you for putting up with my prima donna attitude and sticking around. Hopefully I will get my act together sooner, and I pray that 2009 will be more productive and successful that 2008.