Prince Koindrindra Escapes

Reading Gibberish lately, you'd think the only thing I do is watch the Astros and the presidential debates, with a little mutant animal speculation thrown in for variety. Not so. I do still occasionally write. Sometimes. If I can't come up with a good excuse not to.

These last couple of days I've been working on my sacrifical offering for the altar of Turkey City. This is significant, as it will be the last Turkey City attended by Bruce Sterling for the forseeable future, as Bruce is moving to California. To mark this bittersweet occasion, I'm writing an alternate history piece titled Prince Koindrindra Escapes. I've never written that sub-genre before, which means I'm just begging to be hammered by Howard Waldrop, who will pick up on every single obscure historical reference I make in the story, and then point out where I went wrong by not incorporating a dozen or so other, even more obscure references. In short, I shall be schooled by the master. But that's what writers workshops are for, right?

He hazarded a glance over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the garish spires of the Hippodrome anymore. He could see the flickering glow of flames against the rising column of smoke. That hellhole was going up like a tinderbox. Coleen had stressed the need for speed. Avoid delay at all cost. Koindrindra allowed himself a grim smile.

Interesting thing about this story, it alternates between the present (the present being the 1930s in the story) and flashback. The present scenes are short, punchy and crisp. I think they're working very well. The flashbacks, however... ugh. When I finished writing last night, I looked over my efforts and was appalled to see I'd really lost the "voice" I'm trying to write in. Infodump city.

Tonight, I'm going to try something I've never done before to circumvent the problem. Since the "present" is working well, I'm going to write the sequence through chronologically to the finale. Once that's finished, I'll go and backfill the flashback scenes. Hopefully, by that point the voice will be so firmly established that I won't have any backsliding.

Interesting thing about casual research for short stories--sometimes you turn up serendipitous facts that mesh perfectly with what you're trying to accomplish with the story. Oddball stuff like the fact John Ringling, the last of the Ringling Brothers of circus fame, died at the age of 70 on December 2, 1936. This is good to know.

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