This is something I’d like to get into the habit of for my work, as it’s published. I hope you find it enjoyable!
Story: How to Survive a Draconic Business Takeover [Link]
Published in: “One Universe to the Left” anthology
Length: 2,500 words
Brief synopsis:
Oh no, my kobolds are unionizing pic.twitter.com/IJmcAn7s7n
— mastodon.art/@fleeks 🏳️⚧️ (@ArtOfFleeks) June 22, 2023
How the story came to be:
I went to school for journalism. The thing I wanted to do was work for TechCrunch and/or Engadget and write those stories about tech and startups. Well, that did not happen, but I kept reading all those articles. And ended up in the San Francisco Bay area, in the thick of All Of That, and even worked at start-ups, too.
So, of course, I have read approximately five-thousand articles about Elon Musk and Twitter.
I had already submitted one piece to the anthology (“The Fox and the Unicorns”, which is not getting one of these posts because I honestly forgot how I came up with it haha), which was being run by one of the branches of the California Writers Club. In their newsletter, they said they were allowing people to submit two pieces.
Well, isn’t that neat! I should do that. Oh, but whatever should I write about?
Most of my story ideas go like this:
- I have a random thought, to the tune of “haha what if X but it was Y haha what then”
- I then take it to the n-th degree, to it’s logical, deranged conclusion
- I write a story I think no one could ever possibly want to publish
So you can see where this is going. “Haha what if Elon Twitter but it’s fantasy.” And then I remembered the “Help! My kobolds are unionizing” post and said, sure, let’s do that. Kobold Twitter.
It was pretty easy to write, I think the first draft was in two sittings. The hardest part was figuring out how to fantasy-ify concepts like the blockchain, Tesla autopilot, The Boring Company, Jack Dorsey ditching Twitter to play with money and then selling it to a guy who is obviously going to ruin the company, but, oh! He’s another billionaire! He’s another serial entrepreneur! There’s no way this can go wrong! And Elon Musk reply guys. And everything else you can probably guess would be in this story.
But all of those were fun challenges. I was giggling and kicking my feet the whole time because it is very, very silly and I think it would be very funny if the real Smaragdine The Excellent found the story and preemptively banned my Twitter account because I do not portray him kindly.
PUBLISHING THE STORY:
Relative Confidence Level Before Submitting: 5
I felt it had a decent chance for the anthology, but for anywhere else? I dunno. How many fantasy fans are also this tuned in to tech news BS? More than 0, probably, but is it enough to justify buying this piece?
Rejections before finding a home: 0
🙌
The eventual home: One Universe to the Left, which is an anthology put together by the Redwood Writers branch of the California Writers Club. I’m a member of the Berkeley branch, and they allowed cwc members across the state to submit.
This is a very fun story 🙂 I hope you check it out! If you’d like to check out the other story in the anthology, you can get it! For free! By signing up for my email list! You’ll get a much more in depth version of the posts like these! And you’ll never miss when a new story comes out! And also maybe more free stories in the future! You can sign up for it using the widget on the right side of the site or [this link].
