Coming up for Air - Where I've Been Lately

Life took a turn for the hectic: work at the day job got busy and then a wave of single-digits temperatures with sub-zero wind chills hit the Miskatonic Valley, which laid me out with a nasty head cold that is yielding, thank heavens, to me resting with some good books, green tea and the odd Odwalla smoothie. I've still managed to clatter out another story, this one a faery tale sequel based on a confluence of the Irish folk tale "The Children of Lir" and the Brothers' Grimm "The Six Swans". This happened when my brain somehow tacked the ending of "The Six Swans" onto "The Children of Lir", and in that ending, rather than being turned back only to resume the forms of older men because Time Works Differently in the realm of Faery, they turned back into themselves through the power of some magical shirts crafted by their sister, except for the youngest, whose shirt lacked a sleeve, and so he came back with a swan's wing in place of one arm. So! I decided to write a tale of what happens to that youngest brother and how he struggles to adjust to his new life. Admittedly, some of the inspiration came from my own struggles to live with my diagnoses, the support (or lack of support) I've known as I adjust to them, and just how much one can feel like a freak of nature in doing so. I'm quite proud of this one, and I hope that it starts a good life soon.

Also I've started work on a story inspired by (yep!) HPL's "Herbert West: Reanimator", writing, in a manner of speaking, a chapter from between the chapters, showing the unnamed narrator and the icy-blooded Doctor West in love with pair of young ladies (very fitting for the month of romance!) and how all that goes horribly wrong.... and how Doctor West thinks he can fix it, which of course only compounds things. I've actually got the last lines of the story written out which I felt I needed to do, considering how Aitch Pi El ends every chapter of the story on a Wham Line of some sort (some of them quite funny in a morbid way - one of my favourite chapter endings of all time comes, after a failed test subject trashes the lab and beats West and the narrator senseless, West comes to in an Arkham hospital muttering "Dammit... it wasn't fresh enough."); the ending line I came up with for this story of mine pleases me thoroughly, and I hope, when the tale sees the printed page beyond the screen of my laptop, it pleases you.