Attack of the NEW SHINY

It all started when Aunt Beast got lured into the clutches of The Forest of Eyes and Teeth, and found, after 30 pages of interesting post-apocalyptic isolated forest community and cool premise, a parboiled, piebald YA romance.  I have not read the book, but I love the premise, and listening to Aunt Beast's experiences with the story, I was siezed with a fit of I-can-do-betterism.  The birth of writers everywhere, sure, but at this stage in the game, I know it's a trap (and, anyway, every time I've experienced it, it's never actually been true, not even when I read Ed Greenwood's Spellfire [in my defense I was 10 - my two trunk novels are better than that and I will never let them out, because]).


That's not where it started.  It started when csecooney got me onto Crow Kids.  Again. 


That's not where it started.  It started when Dora Goss read her Crow Man poem at Readercon.


That's not where it started.  It started when I tried writing urban fantasy set in Manchester Connecticut (CITY OF VILLAGE CHARM).


That's probably not where it started, either.  I seem to remember something benlehman did, asking for games about love, but all I could think of was two lovers walking in drifts of falling, edible pollen.


What do these things have in common?


Nothing.  Except.


I kind of want to make them into a story.  There's too much here for a short story, even the way I write.  There's too much here for a short story, especially the way I write.  From here, it looks like a novel.  Or a novella (DREAD).  I'm hoping, for the sake of anyone ever reading it that it is a novel.  You know, kind of like THE CHILD IN HIS NEVER GONNA BE FINISHED SWORD.


You know, kind of like MOTHERFUCKING PIRATES.


You know, kind of like HARE WATER.


You know, kind of like THE "WHOOPS WE ATE A GOD" STORY (actually, I think I could do that one as a short story...).


But still, here I am wondering how small an isolated human population can get and remain genetically viable.  Or what it would be like if that population was composed of two culturally and physically distinct groups of people who, at least at first, have pretty equal levels of social power.  I am going to need to know a lot more about the experience of biracial people, too.  A lot-lot more.  Also, what a plant would need to be like to float along in clouds and have edible pollen.  Yes, the story needs that. 



You know, this is not so bad.  This story, whatever it may be is going to require a lot of research.  Which I can do while writing other stuff.  YAY!