I haven’t gotten serious about a new novel since finishing Tom Derringer & the Electrical Empire; oh, I’ve added a page here and a page there, but haven’t focused on one. Instead I’ve been writing short stories.

Not counting stories for specific anthologies, I have now finished two of the three I had going:

“The Harvest” is an Ethshar story, 7,300 words, set in the year YS 5202 on a wheat farm eighty miles north of Ethshar of the Spices. I started it in June at the request of a reader.

“Three Days Late for the Hanging” is a fantasy western, 6,800 words, with the setting deliberately vague but probably Colorado in 1878 or thereabouts; I started writing it on a whim in 2014, and finally got it done.

The one I haven’t finished yet is “The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly,” nine pages/2,200 words so far; I started it in 2004(!). It’s set in a sort of mythic version of small-town America.

Not sure whether I’ll get “The Girl Who Couldn’t Fly” done next, or get serious on a novel.