Story: The Stardust Obsidian
Published in: Wyldblood [print/ebook]
Length: 4,100 words
Brief synopsis:
How the story came to be: Do you know Palworld lol
okay I KNOW I start a lot of my “why did you write this story?”s with “Do you know x lol” and that’s in a “yes this is pretty much just fanfic shhhhh” way but that’s…not really the case here? I was taking part in a flash fiction contest, and, for that round, I “adopted” a title (which was “The Stardust Obsidian”). Which I really like the name! But I had NO idea what to do with it.
So, I do what I always do when I have a looming deadline: I play whatever video game that I’m currently playing, and I just sorta. Run around and do my silly little tasks and look at things and hope I can generate an idea. My favorite Pokemon is Silvally, and Palworld has a guy very similar to that, Shadowbeak. Only it’s a lot more gryphon-y, with the wings and no fish butt or bug legs, and all black. But it has a similar background, where an Evil Orginization GMO’d it (but, unlike Silvally, there doesn’t seem to be a “purpose” it was designed for).
So…I got this black gryphon pal now, obsidian, sci fi bacground, stardust, stars…what if someone GMO’d a gryphon? For a sci fi purpose? Hey that title sounds like it could be the name of a ship! So, you see how this happened lol.
This flash contest actually has a limit of 750 words, so I just barely managed to squeak through, and I knew the story was way longer than that. Surely, 1,000 words would do it! So I rewrote, not paying attention to the wordcount….and it ended up at 4,100. 5.5 times bigger. Surely, I must have screwed up somewhere. And I go through it…and, no. There really wasn’t much I could do to make it shorter. Funny how that goes, huh?
(I wrote this story a bit ago. So, at my current skill level, I’m sure I could be more efficient with it now…but, once I finish a story, I really don’t like to touch it again, otherwise I’ll constantly be revising it and nothing will ever be done done lol.)
PUBLISHING THE STORY
Relative Confidence Level Before Submitting: Like, 5. Not to spoil anything, but I do do a Thing with this one that I know some editors hate (I have specifically seen this Thing on a place’s hard sell list before). But I thought it was good! I really liked the ending and how it’s one thing but the reader knows it’s something very different and they have to sit there with that dichotomy and think about it.
Rejections before finding a home: 43. Clearly, people did not like the Thing lol.
The eventual home: Wyldblood. I think this was my first time submitting to them, too? But they liked it! So hooray 🙂
