My story Two Things About Thrand Zandy’s TechnoThèque is out now in The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, with original art by Dermot Power!
Here’s an excerpt from an interview that will be appearing at the Journal soon:
I wrote the first draft of Two Things About Thrand Zandy’s TechoThèque in the final sixth week of the 2010 Clarion Writers’ Workshop. Though, overall, Clarion was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life, this story was a struggle.
My fifth week story had not gone over well, and so I was determined to nail my sixth and final draft. I was determined all that week…to no avail: by the end of the week, with a Sunday night deadline, I had no ideas and no words. So Saturday morning I took refuge in a local cafe with Kai Ashante Wilson and just started frantically dumping whatever came to mind onto the page. I worked pretty much continuously right up to and a little past the deadline the next day: thanks goodness Kai reminded me to occasionally eat and drink.
I usually do most of my real writing in revision, but this one went raw into the Clarion grinder… and came through it pretty much unscathed, and with some encouraging comments. I’ve done a fair amount of revision since, for the most part in understanding Halo and clarifying her voice. The comments of my Clarion-mates have been invaluable during that process, particularly in helping me avoid the pitfalls of my writing a female character. But at a plot and paragraph level, this is pretty much what I wrote that weekend.