Where Did That Come From?

I have been a fan of science fiction for a long, long time. I love and respect the genre and its masters so much that I have felt intimidated about the prospect of writing within it. I’ve tried a few times, one story was submitted to the now-defunct erotic magazine, Salacious for their sci-fi edition.  That volume never made it to press.

At any rate, I’ve been thinking a lot about trying my hand with sci-fi again recently, inspired by a book of short stories I’m reading by Isaac Asimov called ‘The Early Asimov, Book One’.  Along with some of his earliest stories, some written while he was a teenager, he wrote the stories behind the stories.  Though Asimov is a prodigious talent and I don’t pretend to be in his league, reading his self-deprecating comments about his early work and struggles with writing is an inspiration.  It helps to see the human behind the legend and to be reminded that even with all the successes our favorite writers have enjoyed, they aren’t perfect, they question their abilities, they write imperfect stories, they keep writing.

The story I posted a couple of hours earlier was inspired by some odd little black flies that don’t buzz.  I was watching a few of them in the bathroom and had a disturbing vision of the walls covered with them, covered so completely the walls weren’t visible underneath.  I was half-asleep at the time, and the rest of the story came quickly, as they sometimes do when my internal editor isn’t awake yet.  Not sure what I’ll do with it, it’s not complete, could definitely be improved and extended.  It’s also not just sci-fi but leans into speculative fiction as well.  I should probably blame Neil Gaiman and Chuck Wendig for that, considering how much of their work I’ve been reading this past year.  At any rate, I enjoyed the exercise and hope you did, too.