stop. start. stutter.

I've been Gainfully Unemployed for about ten hours now, and it feels weird.

I've really been enjoying seeing what you guys think about the stuff I'm posting. (The one thing I wish Movable Type had was nesting comments with some way of notifying you guys if I reply. I promise I will start to get better about replying more often as I start to post more. Rest assured, lack of responses does not mean I don't appreciate the feedback.) One thing I've kinda mentioned, here and there, is that I plan on doing Friday Fiction -- I'll post at least one piece of writing or other creative work per week, and I'm going to try to do it on Fridays.

Some of them will be "flash fiction" type things -- sit down with a glimmer of a tiny idea, start at the beginning and go through to the end (often timed; I try to hold myself to under an hour on those), give it a light scrub-through and edit, and post. Sometimes I'll do more elaborate short stories, or pieces of even larger stuff, and I absolutely plan to give y'all a full and complete novel that will only be available on this website. (I need something to turn to when I get stuck on the other one.) So be sure to check back at least every weekend for new stuff. (And tell your friends. And your family. And your coworkers. My mom's already cheerfully showing this off to everyone she knows; moms are good like that.)

Meanwhile, the first novel-for-the-publishers has a tentative working title of Sixteen Tons. The way I've been summarizing it to people is: on the surface, it's a story about what happens after colonizing the moon and what happens when the people who live there decide they don't want to be doing this anymore. Deeper than that, though, it's a story about what it means to go crazy, about privacy and identity and Big Brother, about corporate responsibility and corporate abuses, about DNA and deception and loyalty and fear. I'm looking forward to getting to know the main characters and finding out what surprises they have in store for me.

This week, though, I've been concentrating on clearing up the last bits of leaving-work. And I've been eaten by Final Fantasy XII, since we finally have enough time to play it, and I'm treating myself with a few days of downtime before plunging headfirst into words, words, words. So I will attempt to get something up for you guys before the end of the weekend, and try to get onto a much better schedule by next week.