I don’t know how it’s been for you, but this winter has been particularly brutal in Wisconsin (and I’m speaking as a native Midwesterner, not a semi-recent transplant from the South). Good weather for staying inside and getting your exercise the old-fashioned way: using an exercise game on your preferred gaming console.
So I promised a story update a while back, and I’m finally thawed enough to deliver. My latest publication, “Wind Reaper,” is now available in the April 2014 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact: www.analogsf.com/2014_04/index.shtml
The inspiration for this story came from our proximal experience of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita while we were living in Louisiana. I started thinking a lot about the energy in a hurricane, maybe as a source to be harvested in some sort of desperate collapsed world. I also started think about a fictional coastal community where the inhabitants might actually want a storm to hit them (for the same energy-harvesting purposes).
I tried writing this story as more of a medium-length short story and it just wasn’t working. Finally, a few years later, I tried it as a flash fiction piece. I submitted the flash version and got editorial comments back on a rejection that suggested the story was a little rushed. I tackled it again, expanding it slightly, and turned it into the version that Analog accepted. I hope you enjoy it.
For this week’s teaser, I have another fiction-related idea brewing in my head, but I will defer to my future self to reveal the details, if applicable.