Emigration, a short story I wrote a while back, has been published today in the on-line SF magazine Mythaxis. It's not the greatest story in the world (it's not the best story in this issue) but I was quite pleased with it. For once I managed to write a story that made some sort of sense, didn't fall apart within three minutes but, more importantly, I finished it. Often when I write stuff it never comes to any conclusion, it just runs on and on, without getting anywhere in particular, in a shapeless soon to be abandoned mass.
I have no idea of how to construct a story. I'm great (or at least I think I'm great when I'm not thinking I'm rubbish) at jokes and absurdities, and I can, with a bit of work, get a character to cross a room and open a door without letting vast numbers of ambiguities slip into my sentences, but story? Forget it. I have no idea how to construct even the simplest story. I didn't write this one. I found it. It fell out of a bigger thing that I had been working on for ages on and off (mostly, you will have guessed, off) and then, one day, I suddenly realised in the middle of all this waffle was this little moment which was actually working and was complete in itself. I took it out, polished it a bit, and Gil (Editor in Chief at Mythaxis) liked it enough to help me give it a final buff-up.

Two new cartoons over on my other blog this week...

...and the plumbers have been turning up when they said they would (after four months of not quite getting round to it) and laying pipes all over the place for the upstairs bathroom.

Things are going suspiciously all right.