You’ve probably noticed that the pace of short story publication here on IGC Publishing has slackened significantly, with no originals since Finding Eden back in November. That’s not because I haven’t been writing short stories, but since I’ve been doing better about submitting stories more places for publication elsewhere, I don’t turn around and immediately publish whatever I write here on the site. Stories like Codex and The Abyss Stares Back might show up here eventually, but first I intend to collect a nice list of rejections.
Don’t think that this story is worse than those in some way because I didn’t decide to continue submitting it elsewhere after it was rejected at Elegant Literature. No, Until Death Do Us Part is not a weak story, and I had every intention of submitting it elsewhere. The problem is that it doesn’t fit most places.
Back in October, the monthly Elegant Literature prompt was “Monsters and Madness” (I know, how original for the month of Halloween). These prompts have not been inspirational to me recently, since they seem to be asking for something particular which is not necessarily what I want to be writing, but I do enjoy subverting them now and then, which is why I sat down and wrote, for the “Monsters and Madness” prompt, a…romance? Is this a romance? I’m not sure what else to call it.
That’s not how the story started. The story didn’t start with a prompt at all, but with my reflections on immortality and how it would affect the human mind, which I then tried to fit to the prompt for the month. I started writing a story riffing off of Archimedes’ life, except that through Egyptian necromancy he winds up as an immortally preserved head because his mind is considered so valuable. There was a Roman invasion, gods who were actually monsters, and the madness was Archimedes as he is forced to live as a disembodied head for two thousand years. It was somewhat enjoyable to write, but it wasn’t working as a story.
The problem, I realized, was my frequent problem when writing short stories, which is starting too early. With short stories, you really need to start things as close to the main action of the plot as possible, which I often have trouble visualizing before I start writing. Since I tend to write myself into a story, I’ll sometimes cut the opening scene from a short story because it takes a page before it really hooks a reader, and with only a few thousand words I need to hook them from the start. An epic about Archimedes fighting deific monsters over the course of two thousand years as he slowly goes mad that begins with his decapitation (for his own protection) during a Roman siege doesn’t work in two thousand words. It requires a novel, or at least a novella, to treat properly.
I couldn’t tell you what gave me the idea to take the basic concepts from that idea and make them the sub-plot and set dressing of a prairie romance story. Somehow, my realization that I needed to start the story closer to the end of the plot I was working with in those first versions got me to bring an entirely different plot to the forefront. What I know about writing romances isn’t enough to fill even a short blog post, but when I went to introduce new characters who were supposed to be Archimedes’ agents in the more contemporary setting, it was their relationship that took center stage.
In fact, Archimedes fades into the background, only appearing briefly as a sort of homage to the original, and the monsters themselves are more part of the set than they are part of the plot – even most of the characters perceive them as part of the environment. The focus truly is on Hambel and Amby. Thus, a story about monsters and madness and gods and magic and Greek engineers became a story about, well, romance. I hope you enjoy Until Death Do Us Part.
As the smoke cleared and the dust settled, I saw him beside a one-mule cart. He wore farm clothes instead of the uniform in his ten-year-old photograph, and his curly hair and beard were graying. Despite the years, the weathering, and the worry-lines joining the laugh-wrinkles, I knew it was him. I’d sent him no return photograph, but his undimmed eyes scanned the handful of passengers disembarking at the end of the line.
I marched up to him. “Hambel Smithson?”
His eyes took a moment to settle upon me, and they kept twitching towards the western horizon. “Yes.”
“Amby Vrawczyk.” I stuck out my hand, and he took it like another man’s. “Pleased to meet you in person.”
Click here to read the rest of Until Death Do Us Part
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