The tale I was working on for Scary Stories night was getting too long. Sadly, many of my stories suffer from this kind of creeping featuritis. I get a good, simple idea, start working on it, and then somewhere along the way I realize my treatment of it is going to consume far more space that I originally expected. A few examples: “Maeve” – originally projected to be ~8000 words, now at ~15000 and climbing; probably at least another 10k still to go. “Camera Obscura”, my first scary story, originally intended to be ~3500 words, now sitting at ~4000 words with at least that much left to go.

Usually I’m not too unhappy about this, as I think the longer treatments benefit the tale, but this time I have a problem. Scary stories night is a “once-round-the-campfire” kind of thing, so the stories have to be short or people will fall asleep in their Hallowe’en nog before you finish. Not to mention that there is a limited amount of time in the evening and everyone who brings a story needs to be allowed their 15 minutes of fame. You see my problem, yes?

Enter “Double Vision”. I had a great little idea for another scary story (while in the shower, if you must know), and wonder of wonders, the whole thing is only ~2500 words from start to finish. Yay! So, that is the story I’ll be reading for Hallowe’en. I’ll post the first half of Camera Obscura on wordmasons for those who weren’t at the last reading night, and hopefully have the rest of it done for the November reading night. Where it concerns reading nights, having become so used to feeling like a man constantly late for an appointment, this new sensation of being done early is strange, yet pleasant.

Quite addictive, in fact.