A New Story—With Prerequisites

I guess I've known Neal Shusterman:

     For about two decades now ever since I joined the Orange County Fictionaires, a writing and critique group that's been functioning here in southern California for more than 50 years. Of course, Neal's been living in Florida lately, but that turns out not to be a problem. The pandemic, y'see, has made our group's meetings virtual since 2020, so Neal pops by whenever he can.

     After one of our meetings early in 2021, Neal sent me an e-mail asking if I'd be interested in co-writing a short story with him for a collection he was putting together set in the world of his Arc of the Scythe series. I said, "Sure!" then went and read the trilogy. I hadn't actually gotten around to it yet...

     The basic premise, like so much of Neal's YA SF and fantasy, is just terrific. Neal has the true SF writers gift of asking one "What if..." question, then exploring how the answer to that question could change the entire world and everything in it. So after reading Scythe, Thunderhead, and The Toll, I was definitely on board for doing a little work in that universe.

     Neal thought I'd be perfect to write this story with him because he wanted to look at how animal intelligence might arise in the technologically advanced world of the series, and, well, talking animal stories are my bailiwick. I wrote a first draft, Neal gave me comments, and I wrote a second draft. Neal then took that and wrote a third draft, I gave him comments, he wrote a fourth draft, and that's pretty much the one that's in the book.

     Because I was involved, the story's a little bit silly—the main character has patterned his life after the person he sees as the greatest philosopher of humanity's previous era, W.C. Fields—but folks really have to read at least the first book in the series to have any idea what's going on. Still, I'm quite happy with the way the story turned out, and we got to give it a happy ending! Kind of...

     The collection is called Gleanings, and it's coming out from Simon & Schuster on November 8th.

                              Mike

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