Rust on the Blade, by Richard Fife: Chapter One.

A bit of administrivia: I am going to make a new page for Legends, but I am going to continue to use the Tijervyn RSS (which I will actually be upgraded to RSS 2.0 from the older version it is on). That is part of the reason for the delay as well: I haven’t had time to do the web-monkey work for that yet.

BUT, here is something special for you instead. A new short story! The Moment It All Changed. This is a short I wrote based pretty well 100% on a dream I had. More of a magical realism/strange fiction feel to it in a coming of age sort of way. I hope you enjoy it.

Wow, a new story.  Guess I’m not all dried up yet, eh?  Anyway, I’d been kicking this one around in my head for a while, both as an idea to a call for submissions I had seen and after the Haiti earthquake.  I feel it is probably my best third person point-of-view story so far, so that actually makes me feel warm and fuzzy that I’m getting the hang of that, seeing as I’d prefer to write my novels in third person (although they seem to come out a little better than my third person shorts.)  And, humorously enough, I think my favorite character in this story is Beauregard, which will be funny once you read it.  Enjoy.

Well, it’s been a while, eh?  I wish I could say this is “new”, but I actually finished with it a goodly while ago, but I had it out on the rounds first.  I mean, hey, I have to try and actually get published occasionally too, right?

As to what I was thinking on writing this, I wanted to tell a story about a kind of mage that could see through into the various futures and have a bit of a psychological analysis about what that might do to a person, under the right conditions.  I hope you enjoy, and I’ll have a regular blog up on Friday as usual.

This is a rewrite of something I did a while ago.  It is a revisit to the world of Adervyn and steam-powered cyborgs, and the tale of one man upholds the job and his first encounter with the half-man, half-machine.

Also, small administrivia: Short stories will now be posted whenever I can manage to get one written.  I’ll still put give them blog posts so they will show up in the RSS, so no worries, but no promises on schedule either.  Holidays are hectic, and even 1 month can be a bit much if trying for something of decent quality while not getting paid for it

Ok, so I lied.  This is a steampunky fantasy I wrote a while ago and just fnished cleaning up.  It’s a bit of a character piece about a character from a novel I’m trying to get picked up right now, kind of like A Life to Give was.  Bit of a difference from my normal writing, this one is really meant to be a kind of happy, laughing skit over one man’s desperate desire to get a drink.

As to what happened to the Urban Fantasy, honestly, I’m super happy with how it turned out, so I’m going to tweak it a bit more and send it around to a few editors to see if they like it too.  So, wish me luck, eh?  But yeah, that, along with the fact that I’ve been sick with a nasty head and throat cold these last few days, is why this is a day late.  I shall endeavor to not repeat this blunder.

This is a story that’s been kicking around my head for a while, and while I’ll honestly say I don’t think its the best I’ve ever done, I’m still happy with it.  The meat of what I was getting is still definitely there, and honestly I think it probably has some of the deeper developed characters I’ve done for short stories.  It was also a bit of a character study of that naturally talented person that is overlooked in favor of the underdog who shines.  Oh, it’s also a bit of a longer story.  Just had a lot more that I wanted to do with the plot, but still only 7300 words, so not bad.

Oh, not to mention it’s also a change of tempo for RichardFife.com in that its a fantasy story, not a science fiction.  So yeah, I guess there’s that too.  The next one will probably be an urban fantasy, but no promises yet (just like I’m not going to promise that it will be delivered on the 16th, but I’ll durn well try.

This story has a bit of a back story to how it came to be.  Earlier this year, I was fortunate enough to win a contest over on Tor.com where I had to caption a post-apocalyptic picture.  The caption I created was a play on the Beverly Hillbillies song but adapted to the heroine in the picture and how she went out shooting mutants called glowies.  From that, I drew the kernel of what is now this semi-lighthearted and semi-dark humorous story.  So, come and listen to the story ’bout a gal named Zed.

Just to get into the habit, blog post for new short fiction. This is a bit of a steampunky piece based in the world of one of my books. And, while yes it does have some of the minor characters from the book in it, it’s meant to stand completely on its own. Also available via the short fiction page via the nav-bar. Comments on the story can go here since I’m using pages and not posts for the stories.