2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is the week of Apr. 27 – May 3.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 5
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 14
Acceptances: 0
Submissions and Responses
One response this week—a rejection for The Incident at Pleasant Hills. This included a little note with some kind words for the story, but they found it too bleak for the publication. This is a good note for future submissions, and another indication that the story is being read positively, even if it hasn’t found a home yet.
Goals and Results
Last week’s goals:
Revise F-TIB.
My horror/dark fantasy story, Beneath the House at Caen, went out to Critters this week. The critiques are coming in, and will continue until Wednesday. As usual, I’m only glancing at this feedback as it dribbles into my inbox. I’ll wait until the crit week is over before collecting it all into a new document, giving it an initial read-through, and sending out a brief thank you to the readers.
I think this was a productive week, but not in a way that helps my word count much. For F-TIB, I’ve been crunching down feedback into plans for revising the story. That involved mapping out the current scenes and thinking about new scenes, brainstorming a new title and new name for a major character, and deciding on some small changes that will still have significant impact on this relatively short story.
One nice thing about this planning work is that I can immediately see several low-level critiques of the story evaporate as the broader structure changes. That’s the main reason why I advocate starting with big changes and working down to the nitty-gritty, and it’s always nice when I can see that philosophy saving time and effort.
I’ve also been working on my foray into solarpunk, Arbor Grove. When I talked about exploratory writing last week, this is the story I was thinking about. I knocked out 2,400 words of Arbor Grove with only some vague ideas of an event that ties the beginning and end together. What I found was that the story had gotten bogged down in boring scenes and failed to do anything interesting.
So, much like F-TIB, I mostly spent my time staring at the screen rather than typing. I’m working through the things that excite me about the story and the things that are dragging it down, and just articulating those things really helps clarify the direction I should be going. I expect some sort of outline to come out of this process, and I will likely end up throwing most of those 2,400 words away, but they were worthwhile as a way to refine the story.
Next Week
My single goal last week was to work on F-TIB because it’s the story that’s closest to completion. Soon I’ll have critique revisions to work on for Beneath the House at Caen. But I’m also enjoying working on Arbor Grove, and I like to indulge the muse by following a project when it feels productive and fun.
At the risk of splitting my focus, I’m setting a few goals for next week.
Submit The Incident at Pleasant Hills
Continue revising F-TIB.
Outline Arbor Grove (and maybe start on the next version)
The Fall of Hyperion is the second book in the Hyperion Cantos. It is the sequel to Hyperion, and although the two Endemion books pick up a related story in the future of the same universe, the two Hyperion books really form a complete pair.
They are an interesting duo of books to compare. Hyperion has only a few long chapters, each a self-contained story. As the first half of a series, it makes little attempt to resolve loose ends. The Fall of Hyperion has a very large number of short chapters and has many mysteries to wrap up and plot points to resolve.
Severn, Gladstone, and the Pilgrims
Hyperion followed the stories of the seven Shrike Pilgrims, who make their way to the so-called Time Tombs, finding themselves alone in a dire situation as the galaxy sits on the brink of war. The Ousters, humans who long ago committed to life in wandering deep space colonies, face off against the Hegemony, a culture stradles hundreds of planets with instant-travel “farcaster” portals and a central government.
The Fall of Hyperion introduces the character of Joseph Severn, who takes his name from a friend of the ancient poet, John Keats. Severn is a “cybrid”—a hybrid of human biology and an AI personality, with the artificial memories of John Keats embedded in his mind. As if that weren’t enough, Severn is in some ways the twin of Johnny, the dead cybrid lover of one of the Shrike Pilgrims.
Severn is hired by Hegemony CEO Meina Gladstone, ostensibly to draw her portraiture in what is expected to become a defining moment of the Hegemony’s history. For most of the book, chapters alternate between Severn and the Shrike Pilgrims. The Pilgrims work to discover the mysteries of the Time Tombs and how they relate to the Shrike, a four-armed, semi-mythic, razor-covered metallic monstrosity that seems inextricably linked to the tombs and a far-future war where humankind fights for its existence.
It eventually becomes apparent that the chapters alternate because Severn has the unique ability to “see” the pilgrims’ activities in real time through his dreams, and it is because of this that Gladstone wants to keep him close.
The Hegemony’s war with the Ousters heats up and threatens to spill out of the Hyperion system, into the web of farcaster-linked worlds. But the pilgrims and Severn soon learn that the Ousters may not be the biggest threat. The Core of hyper-intelligent AIs, inventors of the farcasters and aloof patrons of the Hegemony, are revealed to be split into three competing factions. At least one of these is Hell-bent on creating a machine god and wiping out humanity.
The Challenges of Mythic Sci-Fi
The greatest strength of Hyperion becomes the main weakness of The Fall of Hyperion. The first book manages to build an epic space-opera universe and populates it with characters and stories pulled from other genres. The overall effect of the Pilgrims’ quest and their adventures is a mythical-feeling quest in a far-future setting.
Hyperion gets away with this partly because it only dips its toes into galactic politics and space wars and AI metaverses. But the sequel has to gather the loose ends into a somewhat logical and satisfying conclusion. As a result, it digs deeper into many of the sci-fi elements and strips away some of the hand-wavy magic of the universe by explaining how it all works. Of course, the AIs and quantum physics of eight centuries in the future are still magic, just with a technobabble vocabulary.
I do appreciate that the resolution really resolves the story (even if it does leave one very specific opening for the sequels). The two books make a satisfying series. But the second book feels more like “standard” space opera and doesn’t quite achieve the same highs of the first book.
That said, my favorite chapter across both books comes from The Fall of Hyperion, and follows Meina Gladstone as she traverses many worlds by farcaster on the eve of war. Rarely does sci-fi achieve such a sense long history in its setting or capture so well the feeling of insignificance in the face of a vast universe.
Is Dan Simmons Problematic?
Coincidentally, as I was re-reading these books, Dan Simmons passed away. I clicked through a few articles and quickly learned that he is widely considered problematic. I hadn’t come across much in these books that raised my hackles, so I ventured down the Internet rabbit hole to see what random strangers found objectionable.
The answer was mostly in his other books. It turns out historical and alt-history fiction is a more fertile ground for outright racist tropes. However, I did find some specific complaints with the Hyperion books, and I thought they offered interesting insights into modern readers.
Firstly, some people are just excited to pile on. Hating things online has long been a popular pastime, and hating on awful people has the added bonus of letting the hater feel superior and righteous.
A notable number of criticisms come from “readers” who pretty clearly haven’t read the material. They complain about unreasonable interpretations of the material, or complain about something insignificant when there are clearly better examples for their argument elsewhere in the books. At best, these are readers who quit after the first few chapters.
One critic took offense at the use of the r-slur by one of the characters, in reference to a tribe of people with a parasite that revives them whenever they die, but degrades their mental faculties each time. This is an interesting case, because the first book was published in 1989.
For younger readers unfamiliar with the history, I suspect it comes across as weirdly blatant use of a nasty slur. These readers seem unaware of the shifting moral terrain of scientific terms around mental disabilities over the course of the 20th century. I think it’s fair to assume that this particular usage of the r-word was considered relatively innocuous in ’89. The modern, offensive, and derogatory usage of the word (and pushback against it) came mostly in the following two or three decades. Similarly, the word “oriental” is used once or twice. That might have been a bit dated in ’89, but I don’t think it would have seemed nearly as off-color as it does today.
These books are “only” 40 years old, but that is enough time for the language and the culture to change. I may be the old man yelling at clouds, but this shallow maligning of the author’s intent and tone strikes me as willful disinterest in any non-negative interpretation.
That said, there are parts of these particular stories that don’t hold up well to modern sensibilities. Simmons indulges in a few Star Wars-style monolithic planets, including a Catholic planet, a Jewish planet, and an Islamic planet. None of these are explored in great detail, but the Islamic planet is suggested to be a place where holy war and fanatic religious hatred are normalized.
There’s also no question that the book embodies a full-on male gaze. It definitely doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. On a list of important characters, the top fifteen contains—at most—three women. Only two of them meaningfully impact the plot. And yet there are a number of sex scenes focusing almost exclusively on female anatomy.
Of course, sex in sci-fi is hardly a big deal, especially in a world where romantasy is a wildly popular genre. I’d also argue that the most gratuitous examples in these two books come from the story of the meathead action hero, whose focus on sex and violence make some sense for his character.
I don’t defend Simmons’s character. It certainly sounds like some of the books I haven’t read contain more racist and questionable material. For what it’s worth, the first two Hyperion books mostly avoid it.
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I track my short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is the week of Apr. 20-26.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 6
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 13
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
Last week’s goals:
Revise F-TIB.
Write Arbor Grove.
More critiques.
The stories that were out remain out. I received no responses and sent no new submissions. Critiques are going well and I’m comfortably ahead again.
I continue to make progress on Arbor Grove, although the middle has been muddier and slower than I would like, and as a result I am still a few days behind on my word count. It feels like it’s going to need some trimming when it’s done.
Despite putting F-TIB at top priority last week, I didn’t actually work on revisions that much. I did ruminate on changes and parts that don’t quite feel right, but that doesn’t tend to feel as productive as fingers-on-keyboard work, even if it is sometimes a necessary step of the process.
Next Week
Beneath the House in Caen goes out for critique at the end of April. In order to try to make good progress on F-TIB before I have another story to revise, I’m going to make it my singular priority for the week.
Goals for next week:
Revise F-TIB.
Changing Things Up
Shocking as it is, we’re approaching the 1/3 mark for the year of 2026.
In writing the most recent update or two, I’ve begun to feel that these posts are becoming a little too rote. Rather than continuing to bore everyone, I thought it might be time for a change.
My reason for this series is partly to improve my habit of regular writing. Repetition develops habits, but it also breeds complacency. With that in mind, I’m going to try something new. Going forward, I’ll try to find a mini-topic of the week that relates to whatever I’ve been writing. I’ll still have the stats and goals to keep me motivated, but this bonus topic should give us some variety.
This Week’s Mini-Topic: Exploratory Writing
I’ve discussed exploratory writing before, and while I don’t begrudge writers who like to find their story as they write it, I’ve never considered myself one of them. It still makes me slightly nauseous to think about writing a novel without having a firm outline.
For the writers who insist this is the way they have to write, dead-ends, plot-holes, and heavy revisions are the cost of doing business. It just galls me to think about potentially throwing away whole chapters when something doesn’t work.
Admittedly, having an outline doesn’t guarantee that a scene or section will work. Planners can miss plot holes, and scenes can look good in summary only to die on the page. Still, outlining lets me feel that I have a fighting chance to catch a wide spectrum of issues up front, before I’ve wasted my precious time.
Only, that’s not entirely true anymore.
I’ve slowly come around to accepting (and maybe even enjoying) exploratory writing for short stories. The shorter I think the story should be, the happier I am to jump into it blind. This makes some sense, because I generally don’t outline short stories in the same way I would outline a novel. When a story is under three thousand words, a major rewrite doesn’t feel quite so unreasonable.
I also find that short stories, more than longer work, can run on an engine of mood, style, or a unique viewpoint. Plot can be less of a concern in a short story, even if I remain firmly against “plotless” fiction.
I draw the line at endings though. I might find a better ending than I thought, but I still don’t like to start a story without having some idea of how it could end. That’s just crazy talk.
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is week fifteen: Apr. 13-19.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 6
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 13
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
Last week’s goals:
Write ~2k words of Arbor Grove.
Revise F-TIB.
This was a fairly quiet week. I made good progress on Arbor Grove, but didn’t quite hit 2k. I revised F-TIB, but it still has a ways to go. I got a single form rejection for Taco Cat.
I also did some extra critiques this week. I’ve found that I tend to slack off on critiques when I don’t have a story in the queue (which luckily is not that often this year), so I’ve been trying to not only stay caught up, but get a little ahead. That way I’ll have some wiggle room when things come up and I have to miss a week.
Next Week
Even though I made progress this week, my goals for next week are essentially unchanged. However, I’m moving F-TIB into the top spot because it would be nice to get it ready for submission before Beneath the House in Caen goes out for critique at the end of April.
Jeff VanderMeer has hovered at the top of my favorite authors list since I read Borne and Dead Astronauts. The Area X trilogy only cemented that position. I had understandably high hopes for his latest book, Hummingbird Salamander.
Hummingbird Salamander stays close to the modern day in a way that will feel familiar to William Gibson fans. There are science fiction elements, but they are very restrained compared to VanderMeer’s previous work.
Borne was almost Joycean in a way that made it a challenging read. Hummingbird Salamander is much more straightforward, even if VanderMeer can’t stop himself from adding literary flourishes. It comes across as more of a suspense/thriller story than anything he has written in recent years.
Eco-Terrorism and Generational Trauma
It’s not particularly hard to pick out the bigger themes running through VanderMeer’s work. Ecology is the most obvious. His stories explore the ways humans interact with the world around them, and how social and technological factors intertwine with the natural world. Area X seems to exist in a relatively near future where climate change continues apace and a mysterious section of coastline is hidden behind government claims of a localized ecological catastrophe. The Borne stories describe a far-flung future city where most of what survives is the result of extreme genetic manipulation.
In Hummingbird Salamander, humankind’s fraught relationship with nature is again front and center. The story begins with a note that leads the protagonist, Jane, to a storage unit. The note contains the words “Hummingbird” and “Salamander,” with some mysterious dots in between. The storage unit contains an actual, taxidermied hummingbird of a variety that turns out to be extinct. These clues lead Jane into a deadly mystery that involves poaching and the illegal wildlife trade, as well as eco-terrorism and organized crime.
Jane lives in an America that is on the brink. Extreme weather is normalized. Ecological collapse is commonplace. Pandemics are perpetually imminent. It turns out that society fails in more of a whimper than a bang, and most things in life are getting slowly, steadily worse. But people still have jobs, family, and lives. Jane has all of these things. She’s a private security analyst, a mother, and a wife. She stands out as an unusually tall, strong woman who has excelled at weight lifting and body building, but has an otherwise normal, middle-class existence.
Another common theme among VanderMeer books is generational trauma, and in some ways this is just ecology at an individual level. A family is an environment, and as our current world is shaped by the mistakes made by our forefathers and ancestors, our personal hangups and dysfunctions are shaped by those who raised us, and those who raised them.
Jane’s dysfunctions are revealed slowly in fragments and flashbacks, only becoming fully apparent in the final third of the book. In many ways, this is the story of everything she does wrong, and why.
Where it All Breaks Down
Hummingbird Salamander is a well-written book. It has rich and detailed characters, an interesting setting, and touches on timely topics. And after some consideration, I have to admit that it is the most unenjoyable VanderMeer book I have read. This book and I have irreconcilable differences, and they are, unfortunately, at the very heart of the story.
From the first chapters, Jane is obsessed with the hummingbird and the mystery it represents. And sure, there is a reason for why the two words on the note would be important to her. But even with all the answers that are eventually revealed, I can’t help but feel that her obsession is unreasonable.
I might be able to overlook that questionable motivation if I had some sympathy for Jane. But in spite of her horrible upbringing, I find it hard to root for her. There are a handful of moments in the book where Jane shows affection for her teenage daughter and long-suffering husband, but these seem like afterthoughts. These people are hindrances, distractions from her obsessive pursuit of the central mystery. When it becomes apparent that unraveling the mystery might be dangerous, she barely spares a thought about how that could impact her “loved” ones.
In the end, she makes choices that destroy her family and ruin their lives, but she can barely muster a moment of self-reflection or regret. Her coworkers are caught up in the maelstrom. Strangers are hurt and killed because of her. She simply doesn’t care. She gets tougher and meaner as the book goes on, but she was cold and indifferent to begin with.
I will admit, as a husband and father of a teenage daughter I may be especially well-positioned to dislike Jane and her choices. Other readers with different backgrounds might have an easier time identifying with her and sympathizing. I enjoy flawed characters. I just need them to have enough redeeming qualities to get me on their side.
All Cloud, no Silver Lining
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d say VanderMeer’s work shows a positive attitude or hope for the future, but the pessimism has never been as apparent as it is here. A straightforward reading suggests that we might have to hit rock-bottom (as individuals and as a species) before things will get better. And even then, they might not.
Jeff’s other work balances that dark and dismal worldview with genuine strangeness and wonder. There’s a reason he was one of the leading voices of the New Weird/Slipstream movement. His worlds are shadowy and unfamiliar, but also unexpectedly delightful. Nobody loves a tidal pool the way this man loves a tidal pool. He describes coastlines like French poets describe their lovers. Hell, in Borne, the post-apocalyptic city is effectively ruled by a kaiju-sized, magically levitating super-bear, and the scariest villain is a regular-sized (but very menacing) duck.
There’s almost none of that here. The drones have gotten a little fancier and the world’s gone to shit. No impossible sci-fi. No crazy weirdness. Just a mysterious note in a grim world that eventually leads to violence and heartbreak.
The Missed Twist
I don’t want to be too down on this book, and I’ve already gotten more negative than I really like. The fact is, I plowed through it, and I did want to know the answer to the mystery. I wanted to know how it all turned out. But the entire time I was reading, I kept waiting for the twist that would help me finally understand Jane and why she was doing all this.
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is week fourteen: Apr. 6-12.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 7
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 12
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
It’s a double week, since I took a week off. It’s been quiet—not a single response to my submissions.
I had a single goal from week 12, and that was to get a story into the Critters queue.
The story that I had in mind went by the bland working title of Hunter’s Apprentice, and although I liked the idea and the general structure, it needed more tension/conflict. I added that in the form of the main character being less sure of the big choice she has to make, and I changed the title to Beneath the House in Caen, which I think is a much more evocative title.
That story is now off to the Critters queue, and should go out right around the end of the month.
Next Week
Lately, I’m finding that it’s pretty easy to hit my self-set revision quotas. Thanks to a backlog of first drafts, I have no shortage of stories to clean up and get critiqued, then thoroughly revise when the critiques roll in.
However, I have been falling behind on my word count goal for new stories. That needs to be remedied. I have a solarpunk story called Arbor Grove that I’ve just started, and I think that will be the target for this week.
Assuming I get that done, I need to work on the post-critique revisions of F-TIB.
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is week twelve: Mar. 23-29.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 7
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 12
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
Another quick post this week, since I don’t have much to report.
My goals for last week were:
Get ahead on critiques.
Prep a story to queue up for Critters.
I did manage to get caught up on critiques, which was not quite as much work as I had anticipated. I always forget that the 75% ratio allows for roughly one week skipped per month.
I did not get a story ready for submission, but I’ve been knocking out one goal per week, so I guess I’ll make it my one goal and get it done next week.
Next Week
Goal:
Prep a story to submit to Critters.
I also have non-writing plans next week, so I’ll be taking a week off from my surprisingly consistent 2026 posting schedule. See you all in approximately two weeks!
I picked up the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition in anticipation of the the physical book release of the (somewhat confusingly-named) Secret World Special Edition for Savage Worlds. I have the D&D/d20 rules book, but I was not very satisfied with the way the Secret World mechanics came across in that—they seemed about as clunky as they could possibly be.
The main issue I had with the 5e rules is all the bookkeeping around archetypes, a system that Secret World introduces to give characters bundles of spells, proficiencies, features and special abilities. Characters trade out and gain access to more archetypes as they level up, and can swap their active archetype any time they rest.
D&D, as the default TTRPG system, has been used to run just about every kind of game, and the 5e SWL (perhaps grudgingly) is designed to allow that flexibility. But TTRPGs have trended toward lighter and less combat focused mechanics over the years. 5e is lighter than some earlier versions of D&D, but still a rules-heavy, “crunchy” system. I haven’t yet read through D&D Next/5.5e, but the impression I get is that it’s incremental adjustments to 5e, not a sea change.
My hope for Savage Worlds was a system with more adaptability than 5e—after all, it’s specifically designed to be a multi-setting, “generic” system.
I’ll note up front that I haven’t played a Savage Worlds session yet. These are just my first impressions from reading through the core book and doing a little online research.
Being Everything to Everyone
From what I’ve seen, there are a few styles of generic TTRPG system. Some “genericized” systems are based on a more specific system stripped of its setting and perhaps some setting-specific details. “Extensible” systems are usually much simpler and tend to be copied and modified/extended for new styles of play or settings. And “base layer” systems try to be truly generic for any setting, sometimes even to the point of including tables of weapons and skills that range from Stone Age to far-future.
D&D has accidentally become a genericized system that at least aspires to supporting all types of play, even though its native settings of Faerun and Greyhawk are both fantasy. The Cypher system has similar aspirations, but is really just Numenara and The Strange (and I’ve never personally encountered a group that played The Strange.)
Apocalypse World and Blades in the Dark are the two games I think of when it comes to extensible systems. They’ve spawned countless other games by virtue of the flexibility and simplicity of the Powered by the Apocalypse and Forged in the Dark scaffolding.
Then there are the truly generic “base layer” systems. I often find that on first blush these are some of the least compelling core books on game store shelves. They have terrible names, like GURPS, and they lack strong settings, which tend to be what draws me into TTRPGs. These games are designed to change settings like changing clothes.
Savage Worlds is definitely a “base layer” system. From their catalogue, Deadlands is clearly their best-seller, but it does seem to just be a western-horror setting on top of Savage Worlds, not the expected default.
Assumptions vs. Reality
Going into the core rule book, I assumed that Savage Worlds would be less rules-heavy than D&D, unburden the GM, support grid combat and theater-of-the-mind equally, and make its rules modular for easy swapping. I found that some of these assumptions were accurate, and some were definitely not.
It is quickly apparent that the system is very crunchy, and combat rules are designed first and foremost for grid-based miniatures-based combat. A full set of TTRPG dice are used, although it seems that d20s are rarely used.
There are tables full of equipment and vehicles, past, present, and future. Armor and injuries are body-part specific.
The system does try to limit the headaches for GMs. The most complicated bit seems to be resolving actions and attacks, with rolls for hit, rolls for damage, calculations for armor, exploding dice, and extra “wild dice” for player characters and important villains. But ordinary henchmen and bad guys are simplified, and there is no HP to track. Characters are either up, shaken, wounded or incapacitated.
This simplified damage system seems like it will have a lot of knock-on effects. Damage will be swingy, with attacks either doing effectively nothing, or rapidly removing the character from combat.
Bennies
The other very important system that’s somewhat unique to Savage Worlds is Bennies. Short for “benefits,” these are tokens that can be used for soaking damage, recovering from shaken status, re-rolling dice, and various other things.
My initial impression of Bennies was that they are a bigger, better version of D&D Inspiration. However, where Inspiration has an occasional impact on the game, it sounds like Bennies are a constant, central mechanic of Savage Worlds. Because combat can be so swingy, Bennies give players and GM a direct way to push back and change outcomes. Unlike the singleton Inspiration, Bennies are a pool of tokens, and managing them is key to success.
Flexibility
The system does a decent job of making the rules modular. There are five pages of core combat rules, and thirteen pages of separate, more situational rules. Specialized systems are presented for chases, dramatic tasks like bomb diffusing or safe cracking, horror/fear, mass battles, info-seeking/investigation, and more. Any of these could be easily swapped out.
“Powers” provide a scaffolding for magic in settings that have it, but can also be used for super powers, cybernetics, psionics, or anything similar.
The Usual Complaints
As is typical with TTRPG core books, I find the layout frustrating. Why does the Gear chapter come before the two Rules chapters? Is it because equipment is needed for character creation? But powers will also be needed, and that chapter comes later…
The book also fails to properly highlight the importance of certain mechanics. I only began to understand the importance of Bennies and the flow of combat when I ventured online to try to resolve some of the confusion the book had left me with.
These things would also be more obvious with the inclusion of some examples. I have long maintained that any core book should include at least a brief example adventure and some accounts of what the flow of actual play looks like. Sadly, many games outsource the actual play to randos on YouTube, where it can be difficult to tell if you’ve found a good example or not. Pinnacle at least offers some free “test drives” in multiple genres on their website.
Conclusions
While there are things I like and dislike so far about Savage Worlds, I’m withholding any judgement until I get a chance to GM it. Since I’m mainly interested in the system for Secret World, the quality of those additions will be a factor. I do think there are some interesting ideas here, and I may try the test drive adventures to get a feel for what carries over between settings, and what differs.
If you’ve played this latest edition of Savage Worlds, leave a comment and let me know what the experience was like. I’ll post an update when I get my paws on the Secret World Special Edition book and have a chance to try it out.
2026 is another year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about short story writing, from idea and draft to submission.
This is week eleven: Mar. 16-22.
Stats
Stories Finished: 2
Submissions Currently Out: 8
Submissions Total: 15
Rejections: 11
Acceptances: 0
Goals and Results
My goals for last week were:
Prep a story to queue up for Critters.
Start the post-Critters revisions for F-TIB.
Get ahead on critiques.
This was a quiet week on the writing front. IN the end, I received over twenty critiques and responses to my story, F-TIB. I suspect this is partly because it’s right in the sweet spot for Critters—long enough to count for full credit, but not much longer.
The feedback was mostly very good, but there is so much that it took a good chunk of my weekend to begin to catalog it and think about what I want to do in revisions.
I did not get ahead on critiques, and while I know which story I will submit next, it needs more work before I throw it to the wolves.
Submissions and Responses
I received two rejections this week: one for The Incident at Pleasant Hills and one for Taco Cat. I spent some time searching new publications to send them to, and found two for each story. So out they go again.
Next Week
Since I didn’t get through my goals last week, they will carry over to next week. I am going to let F-TIB sit for at least a week to give the feedback a chance to
I recently purchased a solarpunk anthology, and it led me into a minor fixation on this lesser-known sub-genre of science fiction. Last week I wrote an introduction to solarpunk, but I’ve barely scratched the surface. I’ve been exploring the web to find more, and compiling a little syllabus for my own self-directed course.
Since I’m taking the time to write it all down, I figured I might as well put it out as a resource for anyone else who is interested in digging a little deeper. (As usual, I’m providing Bookshop.org affiliate links where possible – these support me and local bookstores.)
It’s interesting to note that most of the solarpunk fiction I’ve found so far is anthologized short stories—fitting considering my renewed focus on short fiction this year.
Words Deferred 