I failed to complete my previous novella, “Festerbump’s Fantasy Village”, and I didn’t even come close to completing it (I didn’t reach the turning point that I had planned). I don’t write for money, obviously, so I can only gather the strength to follow a story to its end if I find the process compelling/rewarding enough. If I’m lucky, the concept I consider for a new story will be so shitty that I won’t waste my time writing a single word of its draft. But sometimes the concept sounds good enough on paper that I pull off a few chapters until I realize that the whole thing is treading water. Abandoning a story is admitting defeat, and I hate doing so as much as most people, I guess. However, abandoning “Festerbump” wasn’t remotely as painful as giving up on “Thirty Euros”. I’m afraid that daydreams are intrinsically poor material to write fictional narratives about: not enough challenges/conflict.
By the way, if you plan to make a living writing fiction, you may as well plan your future upon the assumption that you’ll win the lottery. Even if you manage to get published by a traditional publisher (usually because you have the right connections and/or share specific opinions, mostly political ones, with the right gatekeeper), you are unlikely to earn enough money that you can avoid wasting away at a full-time job. Hell, I have a full-time job and I’d need a second person with a full-time job to start considering myself financially secure.
I’d like to go on about how the idea for this novella came to be, but this one was one of those cases in which it just happens. I snatch the spark, I daydream of an increasingly convoluted plot line and I just get to writing. But Glyca definitely came from a single inspiration; that name is just a lazy feminization of Glycon, an ancient snake god that apparently was worshipped briefly, by quite a few people, in the Roman empire during the second century. And I only learned about this minor god thanks to this great YouTube animation. I have found myself singing that song in my head randomly since I first heard it.
Of the other events in this novella, the only one I feel like elaborating on is that Duckson guy that our heroic protagonists ambush and murder. He’s based on a guy who did bad stuff to me for no good reason; the only excuse I heard was that I “denied that friendship is the most important thing in the world”. In reality, the prick was a malignant narcissist who couldn’t deal with someone who didn’t want to hang out with him anymore. He may had ended up becoming an important political figure in this country if he hadn’t crashed his car and died when he was twenty six or so. When I saw his obituary, I burst out laughing. All the problems he created, except for the damage already done, ceased immediately, which is another reminder that sometimes many of your problems would be solved if the person responsible died. Too bad about these modern thoughts about life being intrinsically valuable and all that crap. I’m old fashioned, I guess.
Anyway, I needed to write this story because I was depressed at the time, and somehow getting through this nightmare with Glyca dragged me out of it. It’s the only reason I bother to write at all. It’s not about anyone else enjoying it. And I especially don’t care about you in particular enjoying it.
Would getting fucked by Glyca’s tail feel good or great? We’ll never find out.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 