following The Beacon (trying not to gag on puns)

I finally looked through my writing folder tonight for likely candidates to include with my MFA application. The Dark Tower pastiche was out, as were the three secondary world novels starring a character who looks like Satan, as were many of the short stories that, bless them, tried very hard to be good and instead were stepping stones to other, better writing. I love The Roof of the Sky, but it’s not right for a grad school application. There is a little short story about a motorcycle jumper than I like, and a long novella about a man whose toddler becomes Death. Also, the story about the boy finds a crashed space ship in the woods is pretty good, I think, as is the story about the kids who sneak into an old ladies house after her dog won’t stop barking, as well as the one about the widower who builds a rocket ship in his front yard from old Russian rocketry manuals.

And though I may include some of these, I think my best shot lies with the as yet unfinished The Beacon novel. There’s a huge chunk that’s all Silver Age comic book story, and about forty pages of story that extends from that comic. It’s a piece that, right now, isn’t much, but I think it shows the most promise and potential of anything I’ve written. I’ve posted some snatches of it here from time to time. I worked on it a lot earlier this year, but after graduation it languished and sort of went into hibernation. Tonight I added 1,000 words and wrote a scene I’ve known about for months (although, as usual, I didn’t have it quite figured out).

It feels good, and after five months of it sitting there on my hard drive, I’m excited about the project again.