Yaaargh.

Less than half the length of "The New People,” the second Rahab story took me three times as long to write. Off and on, you understand—I accomplished a fair number of other things during that period, including sentenceandparagraph.com v1.0, and there were very few days when "Jannicke's Cat" was all I could focus on. Bloody eponymous viewpoint character (Jannicke, not her cat) was stubborner than any imaginary eighty-five-year-old lady has a right to be. Still, a draft is now complete. Wanna read it? Drop me a note.*

The story is set some two hundred fifty (Rahab) years before "The New People," within living memory of Eve’s judgment—starting point of the extinction of women on the planet—and concerns the last woman to die.

I plan to let Jannicke stew a week or two before copyediting and sending her out. Now to determine which of the other projected Rahab stories to embark on. Or something else entirely? In a moment of deep frustration lately, I happened to run across the first twenty-odd pages of a contemporary story begun, and abandoned, during my Arizona exile. It's far more promising than I remembered, if no longer topical (I meant to complete it before the reconstruction of Mostar's Stari Most was finished in 2004). On the other hand, it also promises to be another novella—a length even harder to market outside s-f than in. Hrrrm. And I suppose I ought to put a little more effort into finding paying work….

In other sitekeeping news, I've uploaded a new version of rahabmap.pdf, naming quite a few more islands, posted a lovely new portrait on the who is page, added a few artists to the mix on the listening page, and updated the reading page to reflect what's at my bedside now.

Happy (Gregorian) New Year!

* If you haven't read "The New People" (eg, you're not one of the people I sent it to in early August) and would like to, I'd prefer you read (and ideally respond to) "Jannicke's Cat" first. Let's talk.