For Fiction Fans

I know I've been focusing a lot lately on the Marcellus Shale, and I don't aim to stop; it's a timely issue and one I'm passionate about. But I also know that some readers of this blog are more interested in my fiction than in my stance on fossil fuels--and though I could make some very convoluted comment about how our faith in fossil fuels is itself founded in fiction (oops, I think I just did make it), I'll simply say that at the moment there's no new fiction of mine to share with you. I've got about four pieces out for review (one of them a story that was accepted by an online journal that folded before it got around to publishing my piece), but no good news on any of them at the moment.

So, by way of keeping you updated, let me at least describe the stories I'm currently working on:

1. A sci-fi story, "A Very Small Child Called Eugene," about a future United States that has been taken over by racist hate groups. Perhaps not so very far from the truth, some might say.

2. Another sci-fi story, "What the Dog Saw," about a mysterious stranger who appears in a small Western town. As the title suggests, the story is told from the point of view of, yes, a dog.

3. A realistic piece, "More Passion," about a college student and her professor, written from the student's point of view and using her own clumsy voice and diction. Lest the title and scenario lead anyone to worry, I can assure you that the story is not what you think.

As these summaries suggest, my recent work has tended to be rather odd, perhaps unclassifiable, playing around with point of view and voice, which might be why I haven't gotten any bites on it yet. But I'm pretty pleased with the direction my writing has taken; in "What the Dog Saw," for example, I think I've been able to tell a story through a narrator that, being a non-human animal, can witness events but not comprehend their significance. That's harder to do than you might think, and I'm not sure I could have pulled it off when I resumed writing fiction a year or two ago.

So I guess the gist of this message is: hold the phone. I'll let you know if there are any developments on the fiction front, and in the meantime, I'll keep on plugging away at the fossil fuels.