Disintegration

New story came out today.

Wrote this one a while back and it's been knocking on doors for several seasons looking for a home.

It's particularly meaningful to me for a few different reasons.

This story wound up leading to the creation of two others; the first was a previously written piece that never quite worked for reasons I couldn’t identify at the time. After finishing this one I revisited the former, significantly revising the first half and completely rewriting the second into something that suddenly seemed obvious but had been invisible to me before that point.

Another story idea came to me shortly after that which felt like a spiritual successor to the other two, and I consider them to be a kind of loosely-connected trilogy, though the only specific link between the tales are their titles and how each story explores the varied meanings of those singular words.

"Displacement" and "Distortion" both found publishers within a couple months of each other and it always felt a bit unfair to me that this story continued to shiver out in the cold while they sat cozied up beside the fire.

After all, they might not even exist had it not been for their predecessor paving the way.

Coincidentally, this also ended up being the fiftieth piece I've had published counting short stories, novelettes, and novellas. I suppose that helps make up a bit for its protracted arrival.

Mostly though, it's that these characters never fully left my head.

That happens sometimes.

And almost never to the ones I expect.

At any rate, I’m glad this story finally made it out into the world.

The others have been waiting a long time to see their friend.