May 15, 2008

Today was a round-up sort of day: I got word that my short piece for the Don Juan anthology was accepted. I was surprised, because the editor didn't like my first submission, a triptych of nuanced pieces called SPEAK MY LANGUAGE, showing the progress of a naive young man into a somewhat insensitive Lothario as he courts and conquers three different Italian men.

The second piece, QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES, is about a young man engaged in psychological warfare with his lover, another Lothario. I wrote it 18 years ago in the wake of a disastrous affair, and hadn't thought of it much since. I tarted it up, renamed it DON JUAN AND THE QUEEN OF THE GYPSIES, and voila--it suits the new anthology!

I also dredged up a selection from A CAGE OF BONES for inclusion in my GayWritersReaders group on Yahoo. It's a short vignette about a fashion show and its aftermath, from chapter 10. I was a bit appalled at how sloppy my writing was back then, but I edited it down and found it quite palatable.

And not least, I seem to have started a new novel. This one is no surprise, as it's something I've been scribbling towards for a few years now, based on an idea I had more than 20 years ago and which I originally intended to be a stageplay. It's called In the Place of Joy and Laughter, though that's a more recent title, the original being The Nebula Hypothesis and, more recently, The Kalachakra, and also In the Room of Joy and Laughter. We'll see if this version sticks.

Outwardly, it's like Cunningham's The Hours, with a series of incidents experienced by three or possibly four characters who all discover they have a connection, but only toward the end of the book.

Normally I have quite a fetish about the starting and ending of each work, as I calculate the time it takes to write each draft as well as my word output rate. This one feels a bit more leisurely, with no absolute starting point, though I hope there will be an end point.