It's been a minute! Let's catch up.
Chapter Seven of Forging the Phis went live today, and I want to talk about it without actually talking about it.
Here's what I can tell you: the early chapters of the Phis were destined to be hard going. Dark, deliberately slow, with a kind of body horror that I needed to get through before I could get to anything else. There was a lot of structural work happening underneath all of that, pieces being placed, groundwork being laid, and I know that kind of fiction asks a lot of a reader. You have to trust that the grimness is going somewhere.
It is going somewhere, I swear. Starting around Chapter Five, the tone started to shift. The prose warmed up. Things began to happen that are, let's say, more in keeping with the genre we all came here for. And by Chapter Seven, which is where we are today, I'm having a lot more fun writing it — which I think you'll be able to feel.
If you put Phis down after the early chapters, or you've been holding off because the reviews mentioned the darkness: now would be a good time to come back. I'm genuinely excited about what's coming next.
→ Start from the beginning, or catch up here.
In other news! I have a short story in the Big Closet Top Shelf Summer Fiction Contest, and I would love it very much if you went and voted for it before June 30th.
The theme was "Island Getaway." So of course, I wrote a retelling of the Pleasure Island vignette from Pinocchio. (Let's just say I have a moral aversion to taking the direct path anywhere.) It's called Escape From Pleasant Island and it is, I think, perfectly pleasant in every way.
→ Read and vote here — deadline is June 30th, and I would not say no to your support.
And finally: I've been back in the comics lab.
I've already confessed that I'm not afraid of a trope, and that comics are particularly well-suited to playing with them. Well in the genre, I don't think there's a trope older or more reliable than the auto closet. I have fond memories of reading "The Auto-Closet" by Kristen O on Nifty in 1994 (eeeesh!) and the concept has lasted this long for a reason.
Mine is called Career Day! It imagines a company called CareerSync, which offers a Vocational Matching service. The closet is part of the intake process. Too bad the guys who sign up don't realize they're being made to match the job instead of the other way around!
xoxo, Paige