j_cheney | Dragon's Child, Dragon's Price, Dragon's Intended....

Well, pounded out 3.5K words last night to finish the rough draft of The Dragon's Intended. Currently the ending is sort of lame (as always on a rough draft) and there are a lot of notes inserted in the text to fix something on the next run-through, but the rough draft is done. Which makes 10 SS RDs this year.

Yes, I know I said I was going to be cleanning up Masks of War, but it wasn't flowing.

So, this is the third story in my "Dragon's Child" series, and there are at least 2 more in my head. I'm going to have to work hard to make them stand alone stories. The first's off to an antho right now...so I'm just waiting. The second and thrid are now in RD form. I've worked some on four and five, four being an aside where we have a ghost plaguing them--not dragons, for a change--and five being the last in the series, where Jia-li and the dragon finally do marry....OK, it's complicated, moreso by the original premise of the first story.

All in all, I'm pleased that it came out so quickly, and now I'd better get to work massaging these last 3 stories into shape so I can get them out....somewhere....

9K, 11K, and 8K right now....that's 28K just on this one family. ;o)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So these are going to be novelettes when all is said and done? I like the Asian focus of your dragons. One of the more unusual fantasies I remember having read in recent years was Across the Nightingale Floor, which was more or less Asian, and played with a bit different conventions than I'm used to.

All in all, I'm pleased that it came out so quickly, and now I'd better get to work massaging these last 3 stories into shape so I can get them out....somewhere....

My stable of circulating stories is not quite out of control yet, but the rejections do seem to come in cycles. Starting to get to the point where I don't know where to send things because all the places I normally send, I've got something there already... Makes me wonder what the submission log for Jay Lake, or other similarly prolific authors looks like.

Eugie Foster puts hers up regularly on her blog, and I see some well known people's names on the Speculations Acceptances/Rejections Log...still it would be interesting to know. I figure if Eugie can still get rejected, then I should take it so badly.

I'm still researching the whole Asian mythos thing, and hope not to step on too many toes. I've set up an automatic out, because while one of the characters is basically Russian, and most of the others basically Chinese, there's a third racial group inserted there, that I've pretty much made up out of whole cloth...and I can blame them for any cultural element that's out of whack! (This is called ~~cheating~~ literary license)

I'm all in favor of literary license. :) I've been thinking off and on about a historical fantasy novel that would be enjoyable to write... but the research would never stop. Neeeever.

As far as Acceptances/Rejections logs go... Do you have any thoughts about where it's most useful to post these things? I've got a couple years' worth of data that I've never entered anywhere. I was thinking either Duotrope or the Black Hole, but I dunno. Do you feel you've gotten a lot out of Speculations generally?

I do all three. ;o)

Black Hole lets you see the most recent refusals, which Duotrope doesn't. Duotrope, on the other hand, shows the last 12 months, but doesn't break out individual responses. Say if Black Gate started clearing out their backlog, they would suddenly have a lot of rejections clustered within a few weeks. You can tell that on the Black Hole, but not on Duotrope. Duo, on the other hand, shows pending numbers. (BTW you probably shouldn't enter anything older than a year on Duotrope, as they won't track it...)

Speculations is more personal, in that I can see who got rejected. If someone well-known got rejected, then I don't feel as bad.

So each one has a different use to me....

Still, a couple of years woth of data is time consuming to enter. I would say the Black Hole. They store data eternally, and that way others can see the specific entry.

The only thing on Speculations that I'm reading regularly is the Rejection log....

Thank you very much! Maybe this weekend I will start plugging in some data... Probably don't have time to join another online anything right now, but I see you can still post as anonymous on Speculations.

Hey, I like the idea of a dragon marriage :) Is it Eastern, or Western dragons?

Uh, both. I have an Asian Dragon who's playing the good guy, coming to the rescue, fighting for the humans, etc. He's the one who's getting married at the end, which is part of the bargain in story #2. (Made with an eight-year-old girl, which explains why it's put off for so long). When asked what use he has for a human wife, his response is "I have no idea" (as Asian dragons are all male, I haven't seen much evidence of their mating at all.) If you know of a text that talks about it, I would love to know. ;o)

The other dragons are the bad guys, typical Western fire-breathing dragons who are essentialy evil. They have wings and fly in a manner similar to the ones in the movie "Reign of Fire". Ungainly on the ground, etc.

So it's a bit of each. Just being contrary...

his response is "I have no idea"
*lol*

I have no evidence of dragons mating--but there are female Asian dragons. I have a Chinese fairytale somewhere on my shelves that features a Dragon Princess (daughter of the Dragon who rules the sea). She's an eerily good enchanter, too. I presume that some mating must have taken place in order for Dragon Princesses to come about :)

You know, Chinese myth is sort of the opposite of Russian. Russian doesn't have much in the way of written tales until the arrival of the Orthodox church, so it's mish-mashy and skewed.

Chinese myth on the other hand, seems to suffer from a surfeit of written sources, which all contradict each other...

I've found references to dragons who were once human beings, once carp, and some who became constellations. Not coherent at all! Grrr...

China is a *huge* country, and they've had writing for a bunch of millenia...

And dragons are everywhere. There's the carp thing (I always liked the fact that leaping over a certain waterfall will change a fish into a huge dragon), the human thing (there's a tale about a boy who swallows a dragon pearl and becomes a dragon himself). Haven't read about constellations, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I think it's possible to make something coherent out of all of this, but it probably requires a lot of imagination ;) (and just wait until you want to take the Buddhists and Taoists into account simultaneously...)

Well, I'm not going to try for that coherent representation. I'm just going to keep my head down and try not to break any rules.

(The dragon in my story thinks the carp thing is funny. He doesn't remember ever being anything but a dragon...so hey, he could have been a fish or an emperor, but he doesn't remember it.)

I'd find the carp thing funny too :)

And then maybe you can write a story about when he remembers what he used to be (or when people show up, thinking they can remember for him ;) )

;o)

Well, I have only read Dragon's Child, but the family did have a pretty nice feel in that story. I can see how you could expand it into something very special. I am very glad you are doing something like this. Do you remember me asking a question if anyone had ever written a novel that was actually just a series of SS about the same characters? This sounds like that same idea, if you continue on with them. I think it all sounds terrific, and I wish you luck with them all.

Well, I did start thinking 'chapbook' today. F stories should come in at 50K...who knows?

Dragon's Child, Dragon's Price, Dragon's Intended....

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject