Tor.com story is live!

My friends,

The short story I wrote, “Dress Your Marines In White,” is live today on Tor.com. It’s a free short story pre-quel to Monument 14 and I’m very proud of it. It’s a titch violent, so brace yourself.

I’m proud of this piece for a couple reasons – the first is a writerly one – it’s my first major piece of fiction written in third person. In Monument 14 and in the sequel, Sky On FIre, I’ve relied on first person narrators. In a way, you can hide behind the vocabulary of your character when writing in first person. After all, my narrator Dean, only has so many words at his disposal and he talks like a kid.

Not so in third person. In third person, you are much more present as an author. You’ll find more of my voice, in a way, in this short story, than you do in my novels.

The second reason I’m proud is that I had to write this in a very, very short amount of time. Maybe that’s why it turned out so well, actually. I didn’t have time to doubt myself or second-guess my choices.

Please read the story and pimp it to anyone who might be interested. I’d LOVE to write more for Tor.com in the future, so getting a lot of hits on this would be fantastic!