Dry Run: Update 17

Okay, I'm all done.  Only, what, three months overdue?

I should feel terrible about that.  I should be ashamed it took me a long time to write "Into the Furnace," and even longer to get it all typed up.  But I'm not.

I actually feel pretty good about it.

Things take time.  I find it hard to stick to a task.  But I crossed the finish line, and even though all the other racers had long since finished their marathons, and were now at home, showered and balls-deep in significant others or strangers, I at least crossed that finish line.  And that's something.

I ought to write up a little post-mortem on "Into the Furnace," which started out as friendship and grew stronger, I only wish I had the strength to let it show.  When I began this post, I estimated that it would end up being about 35,000 words.  Now that I finally got the whole thing from my notebook (and my head) to a computer, the total looks like this:


Forty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-two words.  That ain't a short story.  Not even a novella.  It's a novel in my book, and if it's not quite there in yours, well, let me have this little victory.  Maybe my next one will be longer.

But as for the post-mortem, I think I'll wait on that.  Let the story sit for a month or three, then get it out, read it over, and write up an author's note for it.  Then publish the suckah.

I took a picture from the freeway on my recent road trip (actually, I took about twenty), thinking I could use it as a cover image, and that picture is this:

In the book, I describe three buttes alongside one another.  Since I took so many pictures, I figured it would be easy to combine them so there appeared to be a trio instead of a single lonely mountain.

I'm not particularly talented when it comes to photo editing, but this is a sort of test image to see how it might look:

Still, though I like the photographs a great deal, this one doesn't do much to sell the product.  Chances are, I'll have to get someone to create cover art for me, but maybe they can use my butte pics to build upon.  The problem is, there's an obvious, easy cover that would tell you all you need to know about the book, but since the revelation doesn't come until a third (or more) into the book, I really don't want to do that.  Like when a movie like E.T. or GREMLINS or ALIEN makes you wait an hour or so to see the creature, but they put it right the on the cover of the videocassette.

You know what I'm saying?

Rish Outfield, Novelist