Rest Stop, A Squire's History of Oz, Best Cuban In Town...

I actually did end up writing "Rest Stop" last Monday, but as it turns out the contest closed submissions...several hours previous.  But it's okay.  The story ended up far shorter than I would think the contest would've liked.  It saves me the agony of waiting, and rejection.  Pat was confused about a few things.  (I reference Pat casually these days.  Hi, Pat!)  But it was basically exactly what I wanted it to be.  Maybe if I'd had more times, it could've been longer, better.  But I didn't even have a few of the ideas that went into it until that day, until after the apparent submission deadline had passed.  In the end, there could've been no different results for this one.

This week I continued working on A Squire's History of Oz.  Because they're in the public domain, I figured out I could actually include excerpts from Baum's books, and that was a breakthrough I typed into the manuscript with some satisfaction.  Last Saturday (not yesterday) I typed up a timeline (drove myself mad trying to remember a somewhat recent Eric Shanower comic, never did find it, thanks in part to a maddening remodel of ComicBookDB that I discovered was happening, in some ways worse than BoxOfficeMojo selling its soul to IMDb, but hopefully when it's back to functioning capacity it will be better), and just left out the bulk of Oz comics (because there have been many) and concerned myself with the many, many film, stage, TV, and book iterations (some of which will be very confusing, because a lot of them have the same title: Wizard of Oz).

And because I'm always brainstorming for that elusive idea that traditional publishers will actually want to publish, I flashed on Best Cuban In Town, which will join my lamentable large assortment of projects that need to be tackled.  This one has the virtue of drawing on Tampa, where I live, with a lot of elements I can practicably draw on, including stuff I'm really sure no other writer is approaching. 

Sort of drew inspiration, too, from the reminder that Hamlet is about thirty-three thousand words.  Granted, it's a play (and paradoxically Shakespeare's longest; I have no idea how many words the typical play encompasses; my mom was a rollerskating judge alongside a guy who ended up writing plays, but that's as close as I get, other than acting in school and writing the odd attempt).  But great things don't need bulk.  Maybe that'll help...