Saturday Short: The Roots and the Spiderweb

Saturday, July 11, 2020 at 3:44pm

Have you ever wondered what Library of Congress call numbers, the heat death of the universe, and Umberto Eco’s From the Tree to the Labyrinth all have in common? Well, I have. And that admittedly bizarre (but totally “me”) connection of ideas has resulted in my newest Ytria novella project: The Roots and the Spiderweb.

This one is going well so far. I have about 1,700 words, and the idea is formed enough in my mind that I expect to be able to finish it pretty easily tomorrow.

And I have more Chronicles of Ytria news. I finished up A Just War last Sunday morning, then spent the rest of the day and a good chunk Monday writing the story that was untitled last week but has since been named Habitat.

With Habitat, I had one of my oddest writing experiences to date. As usual, I started the story with a handful of key plot events and environment details in mind. As usual, the characters suggested themselves to me straight away, and I actually enjoyed writing this protagonist quite a bit. Everything went well through the rising action and the climax… And then I reached the end. I do not often have trouble ending stories, but I was not very pleased with how I ended Habitat. I think it is salvageable, but my first pass of this one was decidedly rough. The first nine-tenths is too good to not make the ending work, too. But that is problem for another day.

For the rest of today and tomorrow, I am going to work on making The Roots and the Spiderweb a complete story, hopefully with a fulfilling conclusion. I also have an idea that’s baking, which I hope will be ready for me to write next week. No title for that one yet, though.

The collected Chronicles of Ytria stories are now 35,800 words in total. The plan is to continue to ten stories, unless I hit number nine and have a significantly sized work already.

Chronicles of Ytria: