on bioluminescent plants, idiots and the (questionable) joys of growing up
Now, I may be childish, but I really need to talk about a piece of writing a little bit, given that I’ve placed a link to my novella here (and distributed it among some of my closest friends).
It was Camp NaNoWriMo 2023, and I was as close to the idea to finally writing a complete piece as I ever were. In fact, I promised myself a thing: even if I won't be able to finish 10.000 words in time, I'll finish the piece till my 36th birthday, which is at the beginning of June.
So, it went like this: I've written 10.000 words in time, ticked the box on the NaNoWriMo site, then deleted half of what I've written and started anew.
It was meant to be a short sci-fi dystopia story about a bunch of idiots stuck on a biologically weird rainforest planet called Paradise. In the end, it isn’t. It’s rather a story about suddenly having to grow up in very unusual circumstances. And it turned out that the only idiot was the author. Everyone else knew exactly what they’re doing.
The story has a couple of plot twists. One of them happened by itself. I seriously don’t know what has gone into me and made me write this. In fact, I finished this plot twist right on the night of my birthday. It was a stormy summer night. I could hear the thunder even through the music in my headphones. I could see the lightning that covered the whole sky. Yet, I was writing.
None of the characters are based on me or any people I know. All of the characters have something in common with me (at some point in life) or some people I know.
The main character is gender fluid and lgbtqia+. I’ve tried my best to make them a person anyone can relate to, and the best decision was to make them as they are - not tied to any role or gender or sexual orientation. This, however, doesn’t impact the plot.
The story taps into a painful and complicated question of human faith in a supreme being.
There are no villains in this story - only people who, at some point, make questionable decisions about their life, purpose and desires. Which results in scary consequences - much like in real life.
The story does not condemn religion or science or honest administrative work - I haven’t planned for it to do such things. It tries to show what happens when some interesting ideas fall into the heads of quite ordinary people. Guess what, the ideas tend to transform into something else, and there could be a lot of fun or a lot of blood in that.
This is a story about monsters. I love stories about monsters. I’m actually planning to tackle an urban fantasy book which is all about monsters - this story being me flexing my muscles and playing with words.
Dabble helped me stay on track and enjoy the process. It’s not a paid post: I genuinely loved the service and will definitely use it more.
I've also planned to learn how to set up a web reader, much like Robin Sloan does with short stories on his website. However, I'm not (yet) familiar with Ruby, and I had significant difficulties with using his Perfect Edition solution. I ended up making the .epub file in Calibre: it worked well enough, but the final result is not as fancy as it could be. Still, I'm learning!
English is not my native language, although I have been speaking it since I was four years old. I haven't found an editor for my writing yet - I'm planning to do that as soon as I have a body of work which at least resembles a collection of stories that I have in mind. Dear reader: I honestly apologize in advance for any mistakes that I may have made, and I ask you to point them out to me in an email, if you so desire.
Without further ado, you can grab the book here in the form of .epub, 366 kB. Happy reading.