As I recover from a nasty cold, I thought I would take a break from my usual content to give my readers an update on my own writing—the question I’m asked most these days.

I took several months off from long fiction to write short stories, a relatively unexplored medium for me. (Though novels take longer to create, good short stories require twice the effort—or so is my experience.) My few attempts were lackluster to say the least and I created nothing I would dare submit to a publication.

On pondering an idea for a flash fiction piece (meaning under 1500 words), a character formed in my mind. As I thought more and more about him, building on a concept and premise, I realized that this story had the potential to be a novel or even a series.

I immediately started writing it. This was little over a week ago.

The novel is a departure from my usual bizarre writing, instead fitting into the category of mainstream horror, a genre that I’m obsessed with these days. The story is in fact a novel inside a novel, each in a different voice, making its construction difficult for someone like me who’s still developing his own voice. At the time of posting this, I’m currently at 12,011 words. I expect it will be between 60K to 80K words by the end.

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In other news:

My novel Snap is still being reviewed by both CLASH Books and Fungasm Press. I have yet to hear anything definitive, so cross your fingers!

My most recent work The Preposterous Theater (a novella) is at Eraserhead Press and I should hear back from them by the end of July (they are very punctual). Unfortunately, I don’t have very high hopes for it.

Next week, I’ll return to my regular content. So until then,

Tchau,

Zé

P.S. Here’s an old picture of me. It seems I was destined for bizarre fiction.