Wednesday, January 11, 2012

WIP Wednesday: Escape from the Planet of the Rewrites

Yeah, I'm sitting on my first installment of Dead Lands. It has wings--granted, they are rotting and undead--but for some reason I'm dragging my feet.

Maybe it's the 3:00 AM feedings. Maybe it's the repeat trips to the specialist in Kansas City. Maybe I need to be slapped around by the ghosts of Edgar Allan Poe (who published some of his own stuff in journals for which he was editor--did you know that?) and H.P. Lovecraft.

In the meantime, I've written (or mostly written) two shorts. I've not written a short worth donkey spit in quite some time. Maybe these will have wings, too.

"Small Favors" features a man who cannot die (think "he coulda been a superhero") in a post-apocalyptic world. Yes, I have zombies on the brain, but I'll be damned if I can write a "straight" story about them. He's a different kind of undead.

"No Good Deed" is a pretty straightforward crime story where one good deed turns into a night of hell for a man and his wife. I guess you should probably leave the guy carrying a gas canister on the side of the road next time, eh?  Why am I writing it? Readers like crime. I can't explain it; it just is.

I guess I'm not dragging my feet that much. Dead Lands is coming (once I finish "No Good Deed"). Promise. I might even have cover art soon.

Maybe.

5 comments:

Daniel Powell said...

Interesting tidbit on Edgar Allan. He must have known what he liked...

Aaron Polson said...

Daniel - Funny what what learns at the library.

Daniel Powell said...

There's a really interesting article in J-STOR concerning Poe and "The Cask of Amontillado." After thoroughly decimating (critically) a priest's write-up of an architectural dig where he'd encountered human remains inside a wall, he fictionalized the story and gave us all a classic of madness and revenge. That Poe was really a piece of work!

Cate Gardner said...

I'm quite fond of crime myself. Reading crime that is.

Cate Gardner said...

I'm quite fond of crime myself. Reading crime that is.