Still not real

So when I decided I wanted to be a writer, what did I know about the craft itself? Why I knew everything, of course. You have to tell an interesting story, and tell it in an interesting way. What else could I possibly need to know?

So a lot of today has been spent looking up what units a Geiger counter displays, how many different types of radiation there are and what they're made of, and what the minimum number of people you can have on a generation ship if you need it to actually be self-perpetuating for more than one generation and how likely it is that those people will decide to throw the plan out the window after the third generation of children who grow up never seeing a planet, or a star. Could I just make all of this fun stuff up and get on with it? Sure, and everyone who put any time and effort to study those subjects would drop the book in the trash when they reached that point in the story. Will I put more than a couple of hours into researching these points? No, especially not at this stage. If I discover any big facts about these subjects that contract what I've already written, will I change the storyline? Only if I see a really cool possibility that I can put in without too much rewriting. Otherwise I'll just include some minor plot point to get around that barrier and get on with the story. That's the whole point of all this pounding of the keys.

So it's now all over the Facebook page. Burnt Offerings Books has released 'Hard Luck,' and 'Dirty' is the next to last story in it. Just now I looked the title up on Amazon, and there it is. I have the page up while I'm writing this, and it's causing another of those weird moments where it feels like the ground has dropped out from under my feet and I'm falling in slow motion. There's the title of the book, there's the title o f my story, and there's my name. I'll let you know when it starts feeling real.

Guess what I'm doing, right now.