My short story One Hand Washes the Other is now out at Abyss and Apex , an online fantasy magazine.
I started it two or three years ago with something quite close to the opening scene of the finished story: A teenager bargains with a wizard to save his best friend (whom he’s in love with—not reciprocated) from dying of cancer. The deal they settle on is for him to perform one favor for the wizard, whatever she asks (with a few limits like no murders).
This then lay fallow until I decided I was ready to give it a shot. The rambling adventure that resulted from Tranh trying to carry out the witch’s favor is surprisingly close to the finished tale in tone and in plot, though it took multiple drafts to refine the details of the quest.
What did change was the protagonist: I decided it would have more punch to turn Tranh into a 35 year old (he was also no longer Vietnamese), someone who’d carefully mapped out his life plan only to lose the woman who was supposed to be a part of it. Worse still, Ryan couldn’t seem to let go and move on (I drew a lot on personal experience from a few years earlier for that bit).
That worked much better for me. Then my good friend Dori pointed out Ryan was being so noble in all this, there was never any doubt what would happen when the time came for a moment of decision. I rewrote him to be much more selfish, and apparently it worked: The last magazine I submitted to told me he was far too unpleasant a lead for them to accept the story.
I’m very pleased with the finished product, and I found myself quite fond of the leads; it may be there’s at least one more adventure in store for Ryan and Clothilde. We’ll see.

A letter from a Mr. Bill Pope of Mississippi is running in tomorrow’s paper as follows:
“It is interesting that the viewpoint of the Destin Log is totally dominated by the views of Mr. Sherman, your resident liberal.
His main purpose now is to attack the columns by Ron Hart. While Mr. Hart represents the stated views of your owner Freedom Communications, which promotes “Freedom and Individual Rights for All,” Sherman stands only for liberalism for all.
Apparently the publisher and editor agree with Mr. Sherman or his column would not exist. Either that or they lack the will or ability to express conservative views. Sherman attacking Mr. Hart is like a pea-ant attacking an elephant. ”
Setting aside that as with some of Ron Hart’s other fans, Mr. Pope doesn’t actually refute anything I said (admittedly that would be difficult, since I’m right), my column, as they say, does not represent the views of this paper or this company. Hart says one thing, I disagree, The Log runs us both; obviously, therefore, we’re not being selected because the editor agrees with our views. And the fact that Hart’s column does run shows we’re willing to run conservative pieces (we’ve had former columnists who were much more so).
It’s not my “main purpose” to take shots at Hart’s writing, as witness that this was my first column about his views since 2007. I’ve written fewer columns in response to Hart than I did to that former local conservative columnist, or to the Ayn Rand Institute when we ran their columns.
I do take a semi-weekly shot at Hart in my blog, for the same reason I used to write regular letters to the Daily News (before I became a Freedom staffer) about some of their columnists (Casey Brooks, Walter Williams) and write columns about the Ayn Rand Institute: False claims appearing in my local paper annoy me more than when they come out of the White House spokesperson or some national pundit. So as long as Hart’s writing for us, I’ll be blogging to explain why he’s wrong, just as I frequently do with letters in the Daily News or The Log.
As for not representing the views of Freedom, in the column Mr. Pope was referring to I was criticizing the government for the use of torture, illegal detention and the violation of the Constitution; opposition to those things is surely a good libertarian position (I’m not a libertarian, but there are things on which I agree with them). Mr. Hart, like a dutiful Republican, voted for McCain who would have continued those policies so no, I don’t quite see him as pro-freedom as much as pro-Republican.