Story! "The Skin of the Lesser God"

Hey, I'm alive!

I've been teaching for two schools, getting read to have a baby, and have had my brain EATEN ALIVE by a novel idea. I made it to about 78,000 words before hitting a Horrible Middle and slowing down. The pitch for the novel is thus: The Cuban Missile Crisis as an epic fantasy. Two bloated, over-armed empires face each other down over a little spit of land... and our main character is the nuclear missile in question.

I am racing Seamus Bayne in this endeavor. Both of us are sitting in the dirt trying to decide who is the tortoise and who is the hare, and not moving.

BUT.

I have a new story up at Michael Moorcock's New Worlds!

You'll have to register with them to see, and pay a bit of money to your British overlords. But it is worth it just to see the amazing cover art Tom Hunt came up with.

"The Skin of the Lesser God" started from a phrase in an old novel. I had tossed around the phrase "godskin" meaning "god's kin." Someone rightly asked me whether I meant "god skin." And of course, I wondered who in the world would go around skinning gods and, as one might, wearing the hides.

Then I figured out who.

Aztec, Norse, and African myth all collide in this one. This is one that has an unusual lack of direct female characters, but since they are all gods and thus archetypes, I think you are free to see them as at least somewhat sexless, or transcending gender.

I have another, very different story coming from Toasted Cake later this year as well. Enjoy!