Years in the making

I love it when I finish a story that I began years ago. The oldest draft of this one that I can find dates back to 2002, and I'm pleasantly surprised by how much of the prose still rings true to me. I made a few tweaks, but the bulk of what I did was addition: filling in the gap scenes, instead of editing what was already there.

I even knew the ending back then, and I'm still utterly in love with one of the characters — ah, that's why it took so long. This favored character is not, alas, the protagonist, and I think I went into a snit about it and couldn't make myself focus on the right character. So I suppose the story needed a more mature writer, not in terms of writing skill, but in accepting the shape of the story.

I wonder what I'll do once all these ancient story ideas are all finally fulfilled. I suppose at that point, it'll be another eight years in the future and all the abandoned nuggets I'm writing these days will be prime for mining then.

After I clean it up a bit, I think I'm going to send "Unsilenced" over to the Trafficking in Magic anthology at Drollerie Press, since it's too awkward a length for most fantasy short story markets.

She moved through the marble and alabaster halls of the palace as softly as any spirit: as though she had died, Veillen thought resentfully, instead of her father. But the One-Eyed Emperor's body had been placed within its tomb with all the proper rituals a full moon ago, and his daughter, in turn, was trapped in the palace. Empress, the courtiers and servants murmured when she passed them in the hallways, and they would make obeisance, but their eyes were full of bright, hard smiles, and the echoes of their laughter would come to her once she turned the corner. They would give her an appellation soon, either the Ghost Empress or the Silent Empress. Veillen possessed the dry, utter certainty that more than her father's memory remained, and it was his presence that still ruled here, as heavy as his jewelled crown.