“The Tower” should be finished this week. It is currently at 3,350 words (13 pages) and I plan to have it finished by 6,000 words.

I made an error in my last fiction blog. It is what I get for not looking at my “writing calendar” I incorrectly believed that my next short story after “The Tower” would be a crime drama. Actually my next short story will be a fantasy. The one after that is the crime drama. So many genres to juggle . . . it might get confusing as to what the next project is suppose to be . . . I love it.

I have been thinking about what the fantasy story should be about. There are many subgenres of fantasy. There is High Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Modern Fantasy, Steampunk, Heroic Fantasy, Celtic Fantasy, and many others. As I was pondering another story about Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits (or Kenders) abound, I found myself wondering if it was what I really wanted to write. I response to my self-dialogue over what I could and could not write, I found myself on a quest for something else to play with.

I found it in Wuxia. This is fantasy style blended from Chinese philosophy of a hero and of the history of the martial arts. Some examples of this can be Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, and (at least in my opinion as a parady) Kung Fu Panda.

The problem with the idea of writing Wuxia is that: 1. I am not Chinese; 2. I have never been to China; and 3. the style of marital arts I personally study started out as a Chinese-Japanese mix but has evolved into so much more. This could be a problem when it comes to writing Wuxia.

I have decided not to write Wuxia, but instead do what I do with other puzzles in my life. I have taken the idea of Wuxia and some other styles and subgenres of fantasy and have tossed it all into a blender. Then I hit the “liquefy” button.

Next week I will start to plot what ever this fantasy story will be. Until then I will let my mental blender twirl, mix, chop, and combine the various ideas together. Maybe I will have a good story come out of it like a delicious smoothie. Then again, I may have something indigestible. We shall see.

Well, I have caught whatever bug is going around my “bill paying job.” I hope that this entry in to the Short Fiction blog makes sense.

I completed the rough draft of the short story “The Last Friend.” After an online discussion with one of my blog readers regarding nothing to do with the actual story, I had an idea. The discussion I had with the reader was a question if I could write a story from the woman’s point of view in first person. The question and discussion made me remember a story that I read by William Faulkner. In his novella “As I Lay Dying” he tells a tale of a family quest to bury the remains of one character. Each chapter is told from a different character’s point of view. With the discussion in mind and the memory of Faulkner’s tale, I decided to write “The Last Friend” following the same path.

If “The Last Friend” was a play, it would be a one act, one scene play. It takes place in an unnamed St. Louis Blues bar. The story is told from the first person point of view between Melody, a raising star in Rhythm and Blues and her boyfriend, AZ. Melody is singing one last time in the bar that gave birth to her coming career before she leaves St. Louis. AZ is there to listen to Melody one last time. He has never told her anything about his work, but this night would be different and he dreads telling her his secret. This night, his job is to bring an end to Melody.

I write this story with each scene told from the first person point of view of either Melody or AZ. I should have this story ready to send to a possible publisher by the end of December.

Meanwhile, I have started work on “Abraxas.” However, “Abraxas” is no longer the title of the story. I have changed it to “The Tower.” As I wrote in an earlier blog, with this story I leave the world of the supernatural and enter the universe of Science Fiction. It is the story of the last ruminant of mankind trying to survive on a hostile world that has to be terraformed if man is to continue to exist in the universe. I plan to have this story rough drafted by this time next week.

After I finish “The Tower,” I shall start work on a new crime drama that will deal with stem cell research and domestic terrorism.

Thank you for reading and please checkout www.davidalanlucas.com for more information.

Good evening. I apologize to my readers for this late posting. It has been quite the weekend. For more details, see my Coffee with David posting that was also done tonight.

At the time of this posting I find myself struggling on my approach to writing “The Last Friend.” My struggle is over the genre of the story. In this story there are two main characters. One is the Angel of Death and the other is the person whom he must take into death. As I look at this story, the idea of genre changes depending on whose point of view I write this from.

While this is a slightly irksome issue for me, it is also a good one to have. I was told or I read a piece of advice somewhere about writing that said the best antagonist are the ones that you could retell the story and make the protagonist. That is the true issue I am wrestling with. If I write “The Last Friend” from the point of view of one character, it is a horror story. If I write it from the other, it is a fantasy. If this story was to be a long short story or a novella, I would write the story with a shifting point of view. But, this story is to only be 2000 words. That is not a long short story by any stretch of the imagination.

There is another story I heard once about Michelangelo. For weeks he sat and stared at a huge piece of marble. His patron, who had commissioned a sculpture from him, would ask him what he was doing. He great artist replied that he was sculpting. He had not picked up the chisel or the hammer. He only sat there and sat there. He sat until finally he knew exactly what it was he wanted. I can fully understand why. While I may not be carving the great statue of David, I can not put ink to paper on this story until I know what it is I want to do.

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