Time for a new weekly writer’s roundup of my works-in-progress and those ready to read!
I’ve been revisiting an unfinished piece of mine and polishing it up in preparation for a Writing Challenge that starts November 23rd on the Fantasy Writers subreddit that I am now a moderator of. This is the first Monthly Challenge that I’ll be participating in since becoming a Mod. Although I’ll be recusing myself from the contest proper by not including myself on the voting ballot, I do plan to share some work for fun and comments!
I’ll be sharing the second chapter of an unfinished novella I’m writing called Oo-De-Lally. I haven’t touched it since April and I’ve been feeling bad about leaving it in limbo… However, the prompt of the contest is to revise and share a languishing piece of your fantasy writing… so Oo-De-Lally works perfectly as a submission and as something I’ve wanted to get back to work on.
Truth be told, the piece was initially inspired and started by the February Challenge on the same forum earlier this year, so it’s cool to see it make a return in a way. Oo-De-Lally takes place in my Exerverse setting. What’s the Exerverse about? Well…
The Exerverse is a science-fantasy setting in a world almost like our own except for a single fantastical element: Recent outbreaks of a mysterious and lethal affliction labeled Genomic Autoimmune Reaction Syndrome.
The cause and vector of GARS is a total mystery, and the best that medical care can do for the afflicted is to treat the symptoms. Even more alarming is the fact that some GARS survivors undergo the process of Expressed Extragenomic Metamorphosis, a phenomena that contradicts a number of long held scientific assumptions. These survivors are left “Exed” and often no longer genetically human.
Despite their transformations, “Exers” retain their memories, personalities and mental capacity. Left to grapple with the problems their changes cause them, they experience a new world as well. One that grants them few favors.
So far, I’ve only released my thousand-word short story The Showroom that takes place in this setting.
However, Oo-De-Lally is eleven-thousand words long and growing. And the Exerverse is supported by at least 25,000 words of background material and notes in the form of The GARS Blog, which I may or may not ever release on its own.
I like how the revision is going so far, and I think I have improved the piece a lot… particularly in the dialogue and the immersiveness of the chapter.
Alright, time for me to stop blogging and get back to writing some more fiction! Take care!
Aethereal Engineer 
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