I published 3 new stories. If you want to go read them before I explain the thinking behind them, here are the links:

I’ll dive a bit deeper into each one and why I wrote it. Overall, I wanted to try a challenge of cutting myself off on developing a story. Often, I sit on a story for a really long time thinking of all the things it could be and it doesn’t end up making the story better - just more convoluted. I’m trying to fall in love with the spontaneity of writing, that moment when you just let words flow out of you and they seem to make sense. Trusting your inner instincts to lay out structure for you.

Brunch at Kurya’s

I based this one on the fantastic Man From Earth from 2008. I won’t give away any details as I describe my story since I wanted to also write a bit of an homage and send-up of Silicon Valley culture at the same time. I imagined what it would be like to have a brunch in Menlo Park, California with a 10th century Oguz warlord. I read a lot of Central Asian history as it is, and recently was on a tear about pre-Chinggis Khan European Turkic populations like the Hungarians. Fascinating practices and ways of being. I wanted this to be a humorous story and I really thought it was funny the first time I read it. It was not as funny the second or third or fourth or fifth time I had to edit it. I don’t think I’m cut out for funny writing.

Mist

Based on a real incident where a cat spilled water on Katerina and I in the middle of the night. I then had a night terror after - I didn’t know what it was at the time but I was frightened out of my mind. I jotted down some notes a long time ago in some Google Doc about the night terror but forgot about it. I can’t find the doc, but recently remembered what I wrote in it (kinda). I constructed a story out of that and a recent instance where I almost set my house on fire with an improvised wick for my candle. I was on a call while the candle was burning and my room started filling up with smoke.

The Rose Guardian

This came out of a working lunch my partner and I were having with a potential client. We were talking about weed-whacking robots and how they could eventually run amok. Overall, I wanted to make this story longer and turn it into a sort of redemption arc where the robot realizes the horror of what he has done and decides to go back to being vegan. The robot was going to be partially inspired by a famous speech from the Bhagavad Gita:

Better to live on beggar’s bread

With those we love alive,

Than taste their blood in rich feasts spread,

And guiltily survive!

I get a little extra sometimes. I am sorry.