Progress!

March 12, 2019 Dale E. Lehman

See the right sidebar? Those are my new covers for the first three Howard County Mysteries. The new editions, published by Red Tales, are now on sale all over the place. You should be able to find them at your favorite online store. Brick-and-mortar stores can order them for you, too. If you don’t mind the original covers, you can still get them at clearance prices at Serpent Cliff.

So that’s one big job for 2019 crossed of my list. Next up: Space Operatic! If you’ve been following me, you’ll have heard me mention it here and there. We’re starting the book design now. The novel will be released sometime later this year (release date to be determined). To whet your appetite, here’s a possible blurb for the back cover:

Curse be damned!

Roberto Maccarone has taken his company, Space Operatic, to the fringes of the solar system in pursuit of artistic acclaim. But in the cold dark of the Oort Territories where the culture scene is lower than that found in most petri dishes, Lady Luck plays hard-to-get. Maccarone’s theater blows up, a power-mad businessman tricks him into spying on a gang of malcontent miners, and a horde of ruthless mercenaries descend, guns blazing. Really, now, how hard can it be to stage a performance?

Some say a curse has followed the company ever since that incident on Titan, but Maccarone will never lose faith, especially since he’s discovered that the most fabulous theater in the solar system lies just next door, cosmically speaking. If only he could play that theater, Maccarone’s success would be assured! But the keys are held in the icy grip of the local Culture Minister, and nothing–not Maccarone, not obscene amounts of money, not even that guy who juggles flaming kabobs while singing an ancient song about how great America was–can pry them loose. Will it be fame for Maccarone and his troupe? Or unemployment in Beelzebub’s outhouse?

Let me know what you think!

Fiction, Short Stories, Writing

Written While You Watch

February 12, 2019 Dale E. Lehman

In July 2018, I undertook a small experiment and wrote a short story while readers “watched.”

Naturally it wasn’t quite like that. I wrote and published the story on Medium.com, so nobody was actually looking over my shoulder. Instead, I inserted comments as I wrote, indicating some of my thought processes and points at which I took breaks. The result was “Zoe,” one of my most popular Medium stories to date, not bad for a first draft. Two weeks later, I published the final version, which contained substantial edits. You can read both versions here:

I like to think the story proved popular because it’s good, but a lot of writers found it valuable in another sense: they got to see some of my thought processes. The experiment proved so successful that I repeated it in more detail. The result was “The Test.”

“The Test” was presented in three versions, a first draft, a revised draft, and a final draft. The first draft included notes written while writing. The revised draft included notes about what I revised and why. The final draft was the completed story without commentary. If you’re interested in seeing how a story evolves, “The Test” provides a deeper look. You can read all versions here:

If you’re interested in the writing process, I hope you enjoy these experiments and find them valuable. And if not, I hope you enjoy the final versions. Thank you for reading!

Fiction, Short Stories, Writing

Rummaging Through the Past

February 4, 2019 Dale E. Lehman

In the main, my stories are pure fiction cobbled together from ideas no doubt informed by my experiences but not directly borrowing from them. But there are exceptions.

As 2019 dawned, I wrote a short story based on a writing prompt, a list of words on the theme “wishing well.” (A link to the story appears at the end of this post.) The prompt happened to coincide, give or take a few months, with some research I had been doing that led me to the Celtic goddess Caolainn, the guardian of a magic well in western Ireland. Caolainn used the well to grant wishes, but often her gift was cautionary in nature: be careful what you wish for!

This confluence of events led me to feature Caolainn in the story, with a small twist on the cautionary nature of her generosity. But before I got that far, I had to have someone to make a wish. I found two someones, a young couple named Ian and Piper, hiking not through western Ireland but the western United States.

The change of venue is a nod to my own youth. When I was in junior high school, my family lived in Sacramento, California, where as part of a Boy Scout troop I spent many wonderful days camping and hiking in the mountains. Once, while tripping down an old forested dirt road in the Sierra Nevada, we came upon the shell of a building whose floor was littered with core samples.

The building might once have been part of an exploratory operation by a mining company. All they left behind was the building, the small rock cylinders, and possibly the road itself. No other traces remained. We all picked up a few cores and took them home for souvenirs. I kept mine for some years, but eventually it vanished along with a number of other interesting rocks I’d collected. I don’t know what became of it.

Now that particular ghost inhabits a story. Ian and Piper stumble upon the building, speculate on its significance, and pick up a few samples of their own before moving on. Initially I plugged this reminiscence into the story merely because I wanted to, but then it took on greater significance. The couple find another ghost, an abandoned fire tower, and through these encounters their characters are revealed before Caolainn, who herself possesses some ghostlike qualities, offers to grant them each a wish.

So there’s the story behind the story. As for the story itself, here you go: The Wish. I hope you enjoy it.

[ Image courtesy SidLitke via Pixabay. CC0 Creative Commons. ]