Spring Shorts Story #3: Christopher Columbus, Wildcatter

Wow, has it really been almost three weeks since I finished another short story? I really need to get back into the game. Still, this was a fun one, and I’m really looking forward to turning it into something great.

As with the two previous stories, I used the Mythulu cards to come up with this one. Here’s what I drew:

STATISTIC: The face, pile, voice, or sacrifice that gives personal meaning to a problem previously encountered and ignored.
EXPLORER: Enchanted by novelty. Energized by challenge. Brave, joyful, and resilient. Worst thing that can happen is for life to become too predictable.
GHOST LIMB: When amputees receive nerve signals from non-existant limbs.
MINE: Gleaning useful or shiny resources from the earth. Runoff from mines causes ecologically devastating pollution.
DEBTOR: One who has received something they cannot yet repay. Leads to either accountability or slvaery. Not free to pursue their own heart until absolved.
WATER: Currency of life. Symbolizes connection. Breaks boundaries. Patient, responsive, nurturing.
VIBRATING: A gentle resonant sumble. Usually felt when some kind of energy is flowing freely, whether sound, electricity, or emotion.
RECOVERING: Half-healed from some kind of significant damage.
FUZZY: A soft, comforting layer associated with innocent living things.
ADORABLE: Too cute to be taken seriously. Cannot intimidate others, no matter how hard they try. Their boundaries are frequently ignored.
LOUD: Showy in a way that interrupts others. Uncomfortably irreverent, noisy, or insistent.
HUNGRY: Ravenous and/or so desperately poor that they cannot afford food.
TEMPLE: Home of the gods. Point of access where higher powers can be found and petitioned.
MONK: Offers total forgiveness. Able to see through deception, especially self-deception. Invites, but never forces.
THRESHOLD: A Doorway that leads to a new life. Once you cross a threshold, you cannot return the same.
WIND: Represents connection to the unknown. Responsible for storms, pollinations, erosion. Influences evolution, spread of disease, and pollution dispersal.

For most of these elements, I ignored the flavor text altogether. With “statistic,” for example, all I did was start the story off with a random statistic I heard somewhere. No idea if it’s actually true, but hey, it makes for a great story. And with “threshold,” I traded out the card I’d actually drawn with one that worked much better. Also, I’m not entirely sure how “wind” fits in with the rest of it, but it feels right.

I’m going to keep going through with these Mythulu-inspired stories until I’ve used all of the cards. That definitely won’t happen until after Memorial Day, which I’ve marked as the end of this Spring Shorts challenge, but I’ll keep track of which cards I’ve already used and continue to write short stories on the side. With luck, I’ll be able to write at least one more story here, and I may keep it up for a while in the summer just until I’ve filled up the buffer in my publishing schedule. But more about that in a later post.

Spring Shorts Story #2: Prison of Dreams

It’s been a little crazy over here, which is probably why I’ve found it so difficult to write lately. It’s not a function of time so much as brainspace, and I really need to find ways to refill the creative well. But I did manage to finish another story this week, and I think it has real potential. Next step: writing group.

This is another Mythulu-inspired story, and I ended up using more cards for this one than any other story I’ve written. Here are the cards I used:

DREAM: A space where anything is possible but nothing lasts. Often inspires discovery and change elsewhere.
SCAVENGER: Symbolizes poverty of mind. Lives on the leftovers of greatness because they are unable to create something new.
DATA: The element you draw next is the primary means for carrying data. (Draw +1 Element)
- MACHINE: The messy, awkward, expensive try-fail attempts of those who elevate a race to god-like status.
HIBERNATES: Enters a standby state with low power usage to survive extreme conditions. Most animals cannot heal during hibernation.
AWAKE: Pulled from sleep, animated, enlightened. A higher state of consciousness.
ARTIST: Passionately engaged in a profession that doesn’t pay. Artists are soul-healers and their work transcends political sides.
CASTE: Systemized, religiously justified discrimination.
LOVER: The other self. True lovers always fill a hole. Stronger together than the sum of the parts.
METALLOID: A non-metal element that behaves like metal. Conductive, fusible, and/or ductile. Trouble being categorized or fitting in is usually connected to extraordinary abilities.
RUST: Deterioration caused by extended contact with water, air, or acid. Threatens functionality. Difficult to restore.
STOCKHOLM SYNDROME: A captive who has developed sympathy for their tormentor.

I was worried at first that this short story would expand into something longer, but I managed to keep the first draft under 5,600 words. If I can get it under 5,000, so much the better. I really do feel like it could benefit from another set of eyes looking at it, so I’m going to hold off on sending it anywhere.

Dean Wesley Smith likes to boast how in the early days of his writing career, he would submit his stories to the editors before he workshopped them in his writing group, and often the things that his writing group criticized were things that the editors loved. But he also says that writers should never revise their work, and that anyone who reads critically needs to “go get help. And I mean real help, professional help, because you have lost all ability to see a story and are trapped by the little black marks on the paper.” In fact, some of the worst writing and publishing advice I have ever heard has come from Dean Wesley Smith, so at this point I feel no compulsion to follow anything he says that doesn’t make sense on its face. But hey, he’s the guy who always tells us to turn off our critical minds, so that’s really just following his advice.

(The crazy thing is that some of the best writing and publishing advice I’ve ever heard has also come from Dean, which makes his bad advice—and it is truly bad—all the more puzzling. How can someone who knows so much also be so wrong? I’ve come to my own conclusions about that, but this is a public blog, so I’ll refrain from posting my thoughts on the subject here.)

In any case, I’ve been really happy with the feedback from my current writing group, so from now on I think I’m going to workshop all of my short stories through there before publishing or submitting them. And I look forward to getting their feedback on this one, because even though I think it turned out pretty good, it needs an extra something and I’m not sure what.

As for the next story, I will try to use just as many cards as I did with this one, since my goal for this writing challenge is to use all of the cards in the deck. But there are a lot of cards, so it’s entirely possible that I won’t end up doing that. Should be fun, though.

Now available for pre-order: Beyond World’s End (Collected Short Stories #4)

Beyond World’s End

Eleven short stories and a poem that show us what comes after the end of all we know.

This is the fourth volume of the collected short stories of Joe Vasicek. It includes:

The Manchurian Paradox
A Fatal Rebirth
The Final Turning
The New Covenant
Hearken and Behold (by J.M. Wight)
The End of Elysium
The Promise of King Washington
Lord of the Slaves
The Other Side of Reality
Schrödinger's Diaper
Two Hours Ago
Welcome to Our Crazy Family

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About the Book

Eleven short stories and a poem that show us what comes after the end of all we know. This is the fourth volume of the collected short stories of Joe Vasicek. It includes: The Manchurian Paradox We have met our timeline’s enemy and he is us. A Fatal Rebirth Nothing in this world should live forever—not even civilization itself. The Final Turning This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper—thanks to me. The New Covenant To restore a fallen America, an ancient and terrible covenant must be renewed. Hearken and Behold (by J.M. Wight) “Hearken, oh ye hypocrites, and behold the desolation that is already come upon you!” The End of Elysium For the promise of paradise, the last civilization will surrender to the apocalypse. The Promise of King Washington When the aliens came, it wasn’t a military invasion: it was an economic one. (Again, Hazardous Imaginings, December 2020) Lord of the Slaves “Everyone secretly wants to be a slave. Those who deny it simply haven’t found the right master.” The Other Side of Reality What if your future self came back to give you advice, and all it did was confuse you? Schrödinger’s Diaper “Stays clean and dry until you’re free to change it!” …except not quite. (Bards and Sages Quarterly, April 2022) Two Hours Ago A time machine without paradoxes, so long as it’s not abused. Welcome to Our Crazy Family Two genderqueer lesbians and a tranny have a rebellious daughter who does the unthinkable and decides to marry a Christian.

Details

Authors: Joe Vasicek, J.M. Wight
Series: Collected Short Stories, Book 4
Genres: Collections & Anthologies, Collections & Anthologies, Fantasy, FICTION, Political, Religious, Science Fiction, Short Stories (single author)
Tag: 2022 Release
Publisher: Joe Vasicek
Publication Year: May 2022
Length: Collection
eBook Price: $4.99

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$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

FREE ebook when you buy the paperback direct!

Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek fell in love with science fiction and fantasy when he read The Neverending Story as a child. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Genesis Earth, Gunslinger to the Stars, The Sword Keeper, and the Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic at Brigham Young University and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus Mountains. He lives in Utah with his wife and two apple trees.

Other Books in the "Collected Short Stories"

Pilgrims and Time Travelers

In Times Such As These

The Stars Our Destination

The Solace of Truth

What Makes Us Human

Some of the links in the page above are "affiliate links." This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. You will not receive any additional charge. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Why I won’t be publishing “The New Covenant” as a free short story single

For short stories, I typically self-publish them first as free ebooks, until I have enough of them to bundle together in a collection. I’ve found that this is a great way to give new readers a taste of my writing and engage my already existing fans. It also helps to market the collections, which is great.

Last week, I was going to publish “The New Covenant,” a post-apocalyptic short story about a theocratic republic in the post-collapse United States that is holding a public execution of four abortionists. The main character is the bishop/mayor tasked with conducting the public execution. While the story doesn’t come down morally or politically on one side or another, he is a sympathetic character, and the execution does indeed take place.

As you can imagine, this is a very politically charged story, perhaps even more than “The Promise of King Washington” which starts out with vultures flying over hundreds of gallows lining the Capitol Mall in Washington DC. Politics has really become a minefield these days, and aside from the authors like Larry Correia who have picked a side and made that a major part of their author brand, it’s very difficult to write about politics or current events without turning everyone off.

Before the war in Ukraine, I used to be able to do that. During the 2020 election, I would share my thoughts in my newsletter, and get emails from fans that said “I totally agree with you, and that’s why I’m voting for Biden!” right alongside other emails that said “I’m so glad you get it! Trump-Pence 2020!” My basic approach was to engage in regular self-reflection, sincerely listen to opposing points of view, avoid outright partisanship, and assume that the person I was writing for was a good, honest person who disagreed with me. And until the war in Ukraine, that seemed to work.

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, something has really changed. About a month ago, I wrote an email with some of my then-current thoughts on the conflict, as well as some of my predictions for what will come next, and while I got a few friendly emails, I also noticed a lot of drive-by one-stars and upvotes for one-star reviews on Amazon. I suspect that that newsletter turned off some people, and a small fraction of them decided to take it out on me by one-starring a bunch of my books.

It may also have been something I mentioned on this blog. I haven’t publicly shared my reflections on the Ukraine war, but I have been pretty open about the fact that I’m reading through all of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning books this year, and have reflected rather candidly on that. Since this blog is public, it’s much more likely to attract attention from potential outrage mobs than my email newsletter, and ever since the Sad Puppies, fandom has been downright toxic with outrage mobs of every stripe. So the one-star bombers may have come from there.

Of course, it may also be that the quality of my stories is declining. But I don’t think it’s primarily that, because this is a new pattern of behavior that I haven’t seen before.

My general feeling is that the war in Ukraine has been pouring gasoline on every internet flame war, and that as bad as the partisan divide was in 2021, it’s getting much worse. Which means that it is rapidly becoming impossible to talk about politics or current events without taking a side, making the approach that I’ve taken up to this point untenable. A future historical narrative is being constructed before our eyes, and the stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world.

Of course, that also means that it’s never been more important to bridge the partisan divide. But that isn’t something I can do just by posting my musings and reflections. Every battle needs to be chosen deliberately and with care, and in most cases, the winning move is probably going to be not to play.

I am not ashamed of “The New Covenant.” I think it is one of the timelier and more thoughtful things I have written. But it’s also very political, and not a very good introduction to the rest of my books. I do still plan to publish it, but as part of my fourth short story collection, Beyond World’s End, and not as a free single. And moving forward, I’m going to be more careful about which short story singles I do publish. I’m not going to self-censor what I write, but I am going to be more careful about what I publish.

Spring Shorts 2022 Story #1: “Blight of Empire”

Finished the first short story of the writing challenge that I’m calling Spring Shorts 2022, which is to write 12 short stories before Memorial Day. This one is titled “Blight of Empire,” and it takes place in the distant future, where the galaxy is full of failed terraforming projects and a massive galactic empire rules almost everything. I used the Mythulu cards with this one, and here are the cards I drew:

AMPHIBIOUS: Adapted to live in two distinctly different environments. Likes to live on the threshold. (Draw +2 Habitat)
- CAVE: Isolated biome that would survive even if the sun died. Represents impressive adaptability and unnecessary paranoia.
- TERRAFORMED: Repurposed to support a specific, narrow spectrum of life. Can be forced, or part of natural biome evolution.
FESTERING: Open wound that has become infected and resists healing. Threatens the whole entity.
FIRE: Symbolizes passion. Has a dual nature. On one side, brings protection, healing, sanitation. On the other, destruction.
GODPARENT: Legally responsible for a child if parents die or are incapacitated. Named at birth and expected to participate in child’s life from the beginning.
INVENTOR: The one who pays the price to elevate their people. Graced with curiosity and unusual resilience to disappointment.
HUMID: Something is infused into the air and the levels fluctuate. Draw 1 Element to decide what’s floating around. (Draw +1 Element)
- FUNGUS: More potent than plants, with all the same variations–edible, poisonous, medicine, entheogen. Overall, a tool for removing festering excess.

I had to draw the cards a couple of times before I came up with a good story idea. From now on, I’m going to go through each of the six decks, drawing the top three and choosing the one that seems most interesting. If I need to pick another card from that deck, it’ll be from the other two.

This story ended up going in a completely different direction than I thought it would, which was interesting. A lot of discovery writing with this one, which was a good change of pace. For the last month, I think I’ve been trying to write unsuccessfully through a general drought of creativity, but these short story exercises are helping to stimulate my creative mind again. Just need to make sure to keep filling the well.

Other than that, things have been kind of crazy around here. We have a long-term plumbing problem that just flared up again, and half the house’s plumbing is unusable. Unfortunately, that includes the washing machine, and our baby is in the middle of potty training. My wife has an uncle who works as a maintenance guy at BYU, and he’s been a huge help, but each day has been a different plumbing adventure. Later this week, we’re going to remove a section of cast iron pipe and run a snake up through it backwards, and maybe a shop vac too. I just hope the sewer pipe hasn’t been leaking under the foundation (knock on wood).

On the publishing front, I was planning to release a short story this week, but that got pushed back due to all this craziness. I do have my fourth short story collection up for preorder, though, so that’s something. Also ran a massive promo last week for Bringing Stella Home, which I recently relaunched with a new cover.

I think I’m going to keep using the Mythulu cards for this Spring Shorts 2022 writing challenge. In fact, I’m going to try to use all of the cards, just for the fun of it. That means that none of the cards I used for this story will show up again. I’ve already drawn a few base stories, and come up with some intriguing combinations. Very excited to write, if all this other life stuff will just calm down!

Slight Change of Direction

I’m currently a little over 54k words into the rough draft of Children of the Starry Sea, the sequel to Star Wanderers and second book in the Outworld Trilogy. Most of my novels fall somewhere between 40k and 80k words, so if this was a typical WIP, I would be pretty close to finishing it. However, I expect that this novel will turn out to be somewhere north of 140k in the final draft, and the rough draft is already shaping up to be at least 160k. So I’ve still got a long way to go before this one is finished.

I was hoping to release this book by the end of the year, but I also want to release book 2 and book 3 within two months of each other, with book 3 already set up for preorder by the time I release book 2. That seems to be the best way to launch the later books in a trilogy, especially in conjunction with a price promotion on the first book. Launching book 2 without book 3 anywhere in sight, it’s much more difficult to make a splash. So I don’t want to publish Children of the Starry Sea until at least the rough draft of book 3 (which doesn’t even have a title yet, let alone an outline) is done.

So with all of that in mind, I’m looking at my publishing schedule for the rest of the year, and without Children of the Starry Sea and the yet unnamed book 3, it looks pretty sparse. I’ve got my fourth short story collection coming out in May, another short story later this month, two short stories sometime in the summer, a J.M. Wight short story that I’m workshopping through my writing group this month, and two more J.M. Wight projects that I haven’t even written yet. And that’s it.

I would like to publish at least one new title every month, preferably two if they’re both short. Also, I would like to have enough short stories in production so that I can keep them on submission for a while, preferably at least six months.

At this point, it seems that the best solution to this problem is to take some time off from my WIP to write short stories, fill up the publishing schedule from now to the end of the year, and go back to writing Children of the Starry Sea and its untitled sequel. To do that, I need to write ten short stories in addition to the two unfinished J.M. Wight works. One of those is going to be a novella, so I’ll probably have to take an extra couple of weeks for that, but I should be able to write about two short stories per week.

So my new goal is to write a dozen stories between now and Memorial Day. That will be more than enough to fill up the publishing schedule through the end of the year, especially if I have enough stories to bundle into another short story collection (which I almost certainly will). It’ll also give me something to blog about, which should be fun.

I wish I were the kind of writer who could write five secret novels on top of everything else I’m doing. Heck, I wish I were the kind of writer who could write three or four novels a year, instead of just one or two. Perhaps in time I’ll get to that point, but for now all I can do is strive to make incremental improvements, and I do think that writing more short stories will help me to be a better writer. And I’m not putting Children of the Starry Sea completely aside, just on the back burner for now. Hopefully that helps me to finish it faster when I do make it my primary WIP again.

New Free Short Story!

I just published a new short story! This is one of the ones I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2020, and was heavily inspired by The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Check it out!

Nothing Found

New Free Short Story: The Promise of King Washington

I’ve got a new short story single out now! This one originally appeared in the anthology Again: Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction, and if you read it, I think you’ll see why. It was one of 13 stories (out of more than 200) to receive the highest rating on the review site Tangent Online for their 2020 reading list, and now it’s available to read for free. I’ll be taking it down in a couple of months, though, so be sure to get it now!

Nothing Found

Unpublishing The Other Side of Reality

It’s been a good run, but I think it’s time to take this one down. It was always more of a fun side project, a cute little story written more for myself than for anyone else. It’s gotten to the point where I think I have too many free short story singles out, and I need to take a few of them down to make room for the new ones.

My next short story collection, Beyond World’s End, is scheduled to release in May 2022, and it will include this story. I was originally going to hold a couple of stories in reserve and never release them as short story singles, just to incentivize people to pick up the collection. But now, I think it will be better to reward my faithful followers by releasing all of the stories as free singles first.

With that said, I don’t want to have all of these stories out at the same time, so that the month before the collection comes out, a person can just download all of them for free with one click. So moving forward, I’ll be putting up and taking down these free singles fairly frequently, and never have all of them up at the same time together.

So yeah, if you want to pick up this one as a free short story single, now’s the time to do it. By the end of the week, it will be gone.

The Other Side of Reality: A Short Story

Unpublishing “Payday”

In the next few days, I’m going to unpublish my short story “Payday.” It will still be available in the collection In Times Such As These, but I think it’s about time that its run as a free short story single should come to a close.

(For those of you who may not be familiar with how I do things around here, I typically publish my short stories first as free singles, then bring them down when I have enough to bundle into a collection. I’m actually going to take down a bunch of my short story singles over the next couple of weeks as I get ready to publish the second batch of stories that will appear in my fourth collection, Beyond World’s End, sometime this spring.)

I originally wrote “Payday” back in 2017, in response to an anthology call sponsored by the Economic Security Project, an NGO whose stated goal is to bring about a universal basic income. My story (which obviously did not win the contest) showcases all of the dangers of a UBI, such as inflation, supply chain shortages, and the breakdown of local businesses and communities.

I self-published the story in March of 2020, just as the pandemic was getting started. At the time, I had no idea that my warnings and predictions would soon become so prescient. The stimulus checks and unemployment benefits weren’t exactly a UBI, but they were regarded by many as a stepping stone to enacting that policy, and what did they lead to? Inflation, supply chain shortages, and the breakdown of local businesses and communities.

In January 2021, I unpublished “Payday” so as to include it in the collection In Times Such As These the following month, but then the other shoe of the pandemic began to drop. The threat of rampant inflation, which the authorities claimed would be “transitory,” convinced me that this story was too timely to take down, so I put it back up as a free short story single, where it remains until today.

At this point, however, the story is less of a prescient look at a troubling possible future than an obvious, and perhaps too “on the nose” (I tend to get that criticism a lot) extrapolation of our present situation. For that reason, I don’t think it’s worthwhile to keep it up any longer. It had a very good run, garnering more than 5,000 downloads, which isn’t enough to have a significant impact on the national discussion, but is still greater than the circulation of most science fiction magazines and podcasts (including, most likely, the original anthology call).

“Payday” will still be available in my collection In Times Such As These, and I do still plan to keep it on submission to the traditional magazines as a reprint, but the free short story single will come down in the next couple of days. If you haven’t already picked up a copy, now is the time to do it.

Payday: A Short Story