Carnivale of Blood – A lurid name for a short story (3300 words) that does not actually have much blood. I’ve been writing this a few hundred words at a time for the last month. It is based on an idea from Lawrence Durrel’s book Balthazar about a vampire in Venice, Italy. Along the way I lost the vampire and the story turned into cyberpunk murder tale with a little sex. I hate vampires so losing the vampire was good. I have to check it a few more times for typos and find a place where an R rated cyberpunk story might be accepted. As always, I want a good paying venue that reports quickly, but this seems to be impossible to find.

Friday I submitted a very short (2300 words) dark story, Remembering the Date, to Futurismic. It is about damage done to a man’s psyche when he undergoes a “lossy” jpeg type compression in order to transmit himself between the stars. The story is very brief with only just the one real character so I expect it will wind up at a free venue not long after the futurismic rejection.