I've written a number of stories that I might get around to posting here. Some of them are rather long, and I'm still trying to decide the best way to present them. As a sample, here's one that I wrote up in the middle of Bill Clinton's first term, called "Beam Me Up, Mr. President!" (Now that it's posted on the internet, I expect that I'll be entered into the file of malcontents who dislike the leader of the free world.) I also have a story called "Spellsong" that I wrote back in my Senior year of High School. Now I know it's not that good, but bear in mind that I was preparing to enter college and find my place in the world, and this strongly reflected my state of mind at the time. (I may inflict other stories from HS on you if I can find them, but it's not all that likely.)
I've also written at least one story and planned a few others based on the characters in the Dungeons & Dragons group we ran. I suppose it's rather obvious that I have a strong affinity for fantasy. The nice thing about D&D is that it provides a ready framework with well defined geography, cultures, and magic. (The downside, of course, is copyright infringement, so keep it under your hat.) I wrote a story called "Over Jordan" for my friend's birthday, and I started on one for my brother Tom called "The Widening Gyre" based on his Paladin. I've also been kicking around the idea of writing stories for the other characters in the group, the Cleric, the Thief, the Mage.
For my creative writing class at NWC I reworked a story I written for fun in my Sophmore year. The story was originally called "Mind Games," but I transformed it into "What Dreams May Come." MG really isn't bad-- It's pretty standard fantasy fare, and reads like a D&D adventure. When I rewrote the story, it turned into a much more philosophical piece (and lost the dragon, but maintained the magic). Incidentally, in my Art of the Essay class I used MG as a touchpoint for my essay on why I write. I later modified it slightly, and this is the version that I have been sending out to magazines (never to be heard from again). At the end of the semester I wrote another story called "Deadman." Frankly, it's rather weak and a little lame: It needs a serious rewrite, but I don't know if it would be worth the trouble. Unless, of course, someone were willing to pay me...
The latest story is "The Boy Who Became a Bear." I've had the idea floating around in my head since the summer of 2004. My niece Kylie turned four on April 10, 2005, and I thought it might be a nice present for her. I wrote the outline for the story at the 2005 ATA Black Belt Camp at Okiboji in what little free time we had then, and worked on the beginning of the story off and on for a couple of weeks. On Saturday and Sunday, March 26 and 27, I spent the weekend writing the story. It's wound up being about 5800 words long. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I paid a lot of attention to the detail and structure. If you'd like to see my notes, you can find them here. I'd welcome comments; though I'm not likely to change it very much now. One thing I need to consider now is whether I should try to publish it. We'll see.