something for everyone . . . .

. . . but particularly Moonartemis, Tooth-and-Claw, Gollumgollum, and heck, even Oddsboy (just to make him twitch).

What's better than gay guys or cowboys?

Gay cowboys, of course.

What's better than gay cowboys or figure skating?

Gay cowboys on ice.

And yeah, that is Kurt Browning out there, and Alexei Yagudin too.

unexpected finish

This really wasn't my plan for the night (I thought I'd write a bit, then stop), but I finished "A Mask of Flesh." Total of 4296 words, when all is said and done; 2538 of that was tonight.

I found the description in this story to be interesting. Ordinarily, me describing something (a person, a building, an object) is a sign that it's important. For much of this tale, though, the two most important people in it -- the lord of the land, and Neniza herself -- were not described at all. Those omissions, surrounded by description that's lusher than my usual and should probably get more lush when I revise, speak quite loudly. It's an interesting inversion.

And I had fun with the description overall. I'll need to go back and consult some visual references when I edit it, to make myself be even more concrete, but it was neat to sink my brain into a Mesoamerican context. So many details change. The people coming into the city don't have carts, just packs -- I didn't have to keep to real-world Mesoamerican technology, of course, given that this is a fantasy setting, but I wanted to. They don't eat beef or mutton or goat, but peccary and monkey. Clothing, even for the elite, is minimal, because of the heat of their environment. I had to fight not to shoehorn all of my ideas and research into this one vessel, and even then, I couldn't resist slipping in touches like bloodletting and the World Tree. The whole point of this project, after all, is to present a society that is not what we're used to.

So it's done, which is nice, given how few short stories I've been writing lately. <looks around> Okay, what next?