Dissecting the Short Story Update & "Lucky 7" Novel Excerpt

OK, so barring a last minute surge of votes for one of the other two stories, it looks like Ken Liu's "Memories of My Mother" will be April's Dissecting the Short Story entry. I'm planning to have that post up either 4/26 or 4/30. Thanks to those who participated in the voting. I'm hoping that having the story be readily available for others to read along will help generate some discussion.

The other piece of business today is following up on a blogfest tag, Fellow writer Rance Denton tagged me in the Lucky 7 blogfest. I'm not going to tag other writers, but will play along with the game otherwise. I'm supposed to "Go to page 7 or 77 of your current work-in-progress, go down to the 7th line, and post on your blog the next (approximately) seven lines!"

Current work-in-progress could be any one of a number of things. But the only one with a page 77 would be my NaNoWriMo project "Adrift." Since any excuse to bring that back towards the front of my mind momentarily is a good one, I'll go with this excerpt from page 77 of the first draft of "Adrift."

"Julia sat up. She was outside, in the same place that she had been two times before. But when was she? The only way to find out was to get up and head towards the road and the town she had found before.

She stood and began to walk, heading in the direction that she remembered going before. A compass would help, she realized. Add that to the list of things that she would need to hang onto as she went to sleep if she was going to do this again.

The thought momentarily struck her that it was amazing that she could simply accept this now. One moment she was in her home, in 2012. Another moment, she was somewhere else and probably somewhen else as well. And yet she completely accepted it. There was no doubt in her mind that this was reality, no matter how impossible it might seem."