Most authors who have been doing this whole writing thing for any time at all have a writing drawer – a place they keep stories they were never able to finish and publish.

Mine is virtual and has more than twenty stories in it, although calling them “stories’ may be generous. Many of them are just a scene – or two or three – mere sketches of tales thay I started and then let go.

I dip into these from time to time when I need a “new” idea. “Skythane,” “Homecoming,” “Tight,” “Autumn Lands,” “Repetition” and “Avalon” all came from the “drawer.”

In the last few months, I’ve pulled a few more out of the vault – “Lamplighter” and “Firedrake” – to finish them up, polishing them to send out to the spec fic magazine circuit.

It’s a strange experience, working on a story you initially wrote more than two decades in the past.

First off, I have no idea what the stories about anymore, other than a vague notion of the “flavor” of the plot. I read each of them as if it were written by someone else entirely – and in a way they were.

I’m not at all the person I was in the mid nineties, in my early twenties – some were written before my coming out, and all of them were before Hawaii and Walnut Creek and El Dorado Hills. Before iPhones, iPods and iPads. Before Bush and Cheney, before Trump and Stone and Barr and Covid-19.

Some of them even predate the world wide web.

The other weird thing is the writing style. I’ve now written (and published) more than thirty shorts, novellas, and novels (including two trilogies) and my style has evolved over time. I’m much better now at characterization, at world building, and at keeping the plot of the story humming along.

Reworking an old tale takes a lot of work – stripping out the speech tags, slimming down the text, and layering in all the world-building details I am known for. It’s fun, though, reshaping these old lumps of clay into something new.

Does it work? Some stories translate better than others, and I am too close to these to tell.

Wait until I get Lamplighter and Firedrake published, and let me know! 😛