The Lost Tale

When I was putting together the stories for "Show Me the End of the World," there was one story I'd written a few years ago that I knew I wanted to include.  It had the ultra lame title "The Box" but I was really proud of it.

In terms of its themes, it was very close to a lot of the other stories in "Show Me," in that it had a rather "Twilight Zone"-ish sort of ending.  It had a little bit of action, and what I thought was a pretty nifty hook to it. 

So, of course, as luck would have it, I could not find this story anywhere.  I'm sure there's a copy of it on some hard drive packed away in my closet (of which there are several) but I couldn't find it anywhere in my email, and it predated my extensive use of Google Docs.

Since I wasn't willing to start digging through old drives, and I had given myself a pretty hard deadline for getting the book out, I made the decision to just leave it behind on this one.

But it bothered me.

 I liked the story!  I really did!  Or, at least, I remember liking it.  Since I don't have it to re-read, all I have is that memory.  But what to do? 

The obvious answer, of course, is to go digging through--

Nope.  I decided to re-write the story from scratch.  I started last night, and I'm probably about a quarter of the way through.  I haven't decided what to do with it when I'm done.  Certainly, I'll release it in some fashion.  In what format, I don't know.  Certainly, only one story won't be worth putting out a hard copy, but somehow, this story will get out there.

But one of the things I do know for certain is that releasing the book has really jazzed me up, creatively.  I spent much of the last couple years languishing, not really sure what direction to go in with anything.  I'd been trying to get out my graphic novel, but the progress on that is almost nonexistent, with only about a dozen pages penciled in two years.  At that rate, it may never get finished.  I've given some thought to simply writing it as a novel, which seems far more doable considering the experience I've just had with "Show Me the End of the World." 

And that feels good.

Current TV:
"Stargate SG-1" Season Four (DVD)