Jumping the Gun

I wonder if I should have waited before setting up this fake blog? The publishing world is so slow that this blog might be discovered before my story is published. I haven't even written my story yet, let alone submitted it to the editor, and there's no guarantee it will be accepted even when I do submit it, and after that there's the customary long wait before it appears in print...

So: to anyone who discovers this blog before my story is published, leave a comment and I'll get back to you with some sort of prize, probably a free copy of the anthology that my story will appear in...

As for 'Rommel Cobra's Swimming Carnival' -- it is progressing slowly but promisingly. I am enjoying the process of writing far more than I normally enjoy the act of writing stories. It has a Jack Vance flavour, but is dafter than Vance, more extremely absurd. But I have just finished reading Vance's Showboat World and doubtless that excellent novel is having a direct influence on the style of my story. I certainly think that my dialogue has become very 'Vancian'.

I have recently read, or am about to read, or plan eventually to read, various other stories and novels that have pirates as major or minor protagonists, all the better to flavour my own story. Lord Dunsany's tales 'The Loot of Bombasharna' and 'A Tale of Land and Sea' are classic examples; I also hope to obtain (for free) James Branch Cabell's There Were Two Pirates, as one of my publishers in the USA has recently taken to reissuing many of Cabell's novels. Pirates are fun to read about and even more fun to write about; but not much fun to meet for real, I suppose!