Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

Anticipation Met With Defeat

I was looking forward to Lois Tilton's review of my story "End Run on GigaNotoSaurus (DW), especially as she had been hoping for some longer stories from them.

Alas, the review at LocusOnline

Green Ensign Darlene Charles reports aboard he [sic] new assignment, meets every single officer and member of the crew and learns every single rope, in an appallingly prolonged and dull narrative. If this were the opening chapter of a novel – which I have my suspicions it might be – the length might be excusable. Not the dullness. And when the expected Crisis finally arrives, instead of our heroine’s competence, what readers are more likely to see are the dominoes so carefully set up by the author falling clickety into place without ruffling our composure by any narrative tension.

Ah, well. Can't please everyone. Won't argue reviews. (But the story is what it is -- not an excerpt of anything or (yet) stretched into a longer work.)

I suspect that one can set up things too well for some sensibilities.

Dr. Phil

PS -- I do have a whole crew list. You don't meet the WHOLE crew. I just have an annoying habit of believing that a ship has a crew and the protagonist will interact with more than three characters in carrying out their duties and... Oh just shut up, Dr. Phil -- you're not arguing! (grin)

A Pleasant Surprise

With so many submissions during my sabbatical and by natural process, so many rejections, it is always something of a shock to see the words "I'd like to buy this". (grin)

My story "End Run" is slated to appear in GigaNotoSaurus in April. This is a particularly nice sale for me for two reasons. One, it's long -- 17,000 words -- and two, while it takes place in my usual military SF universe, it starts almost three centuries before the bulk of my stories.

Thursday 1 January 2601 (Earth Relative Time)

She took a deep breath to quell her nerves. This is my last chance to make a good impression. Because a third strike would not be a good career move. As Ensign Darlene Charles picked her way through the dimly lit mess littering the docking bay, the quantity of unwashed bottles and glasses heaped in bins testified to the magnitude of the party. A sour stench from trash containers suggested many partied too well, an unfortunate reminder of some early college mornings. Ahead, the starship’s giant hangar doors were closed, unusual in port. But a smaller man-sized hatch remained open allowing her to step through into bright lights and a fresh, cleaner smell.

"Hullo?" The tentative voice might’ve echoed in the vast chamber, but in truth the sound was more swallowed up by the emptiness. Darlene had never seen a single cargo compartment stretch off in the distance for more than one hundred meters and had to be fully sixty meters wide. Thick armored doors separating the cargo bay from the hangar bay were opened all the way, as were smaller compartments aft of the hangar adding to the space. Short, blond and still a very new ensign, she felt tiny. Intimidated by a military cargo ship was not how she’d expected to start this day. She’d looked up the Evensong in the Fleet registry and as one of just eight officers in a crew of twenty-two, this ship was a lot bigger than she’d thought it’d be.

"Wow," was all she could say.

"End Run" went to seven markets, including earning a Quarter-Finalist (10,000 word version) in the Q4 2006 and an Honorable Mention in the Q2 2007 Writers of the Future. And now it's found a home. After it gets edited. (devious grin)

Dr. Phil