Yesterday (6/29/15), I submitted my short story, Fearful Actions, to S & H Publishing‘s upcoming anthology. Its theme is Spies and Heroes.
After countless drafts and edits, I finally managed to get it to a place where I’m happy with it. The challenge with the story is that I have four characters that I wanted to make distinct. Further, I want one character to be unlikeable, and the consensus of my writing group is that I accomplished that. Two other characters, while doing questionable things, I ultimately wanted to be likeable. I feel like I managed to accomplish this, but it was a difficult line to toe.
Another challenge was to realize my character through indirect characterization. For instance, I didn’t to say that Sue was a narcissist. I wanted to show it.
It’s in the publisher’s hands. We’ll see what they think.
I’m an author living in northern Virginia with a wife and a cat. In the late ’80s, I worked on the International Space Station project. I recently retired from managing a group of software engineers to focus on writing science fiction and speculative fiction. Learn more.