Note - this Persephone's Hades is not a nice man. He kidnapped an underaged child. It's just that Demeter is so stifling that Persephone would prefer the guy who treated her like an adult. She can't actually consider living in a home that's not abusive.
It's...a really dark story, I'm afraid.
One of my coworkers was like, "wow, after reading a couple of your stories, I'm getting a sense of your writing style as really bitter" and I was like "No!...it's just that those are the only ones I've managed to sell." Which may say as much about the markets as about me.
Actually, I think that's a really insightful observation about the markets...
I was just thinking about it, because my parents and I went to Silicon Valley Comic-Con a few weekends ago, and I was remembering the kind of optimistic speculative fiction that I watched as a kid, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I was thinking about how so much speculative fiction now is dark, or morally ambiguous, or gritty... I sort of think it's the zeitgeist. Technology won't save us, and humans are cruel and horrible. We are globally messing up our planet and the people with the money can't see it and keep their money so they won't see it.
I'm hoping at some point we'll shift back towards optimism, maybe? or realism with a forward-looking slant?
I think it's actually more of a tilt in the short story magazines. It's easier to turn out grim things that seem profound, and much harder to turn out profound optimism. I've gotten lighter stories into anthologies. And I think a lot of novels have more lightness to them. Novels are somehow more acceptable to be just entertaining, whereas a lot of the short story markets are going more for artistic.
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I love when you share your work. :)
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It's...a really dark story, I'm afraid.
One of my coworkers was like, "wow, after reading a couple of your stories, I'm getting a sense of your writing style as really bitter" and I was like "No!...it's just that those are the only ones I've managed to sell." Which may say as much about the markets as about me.
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I was just thinking about it, because my parents and I went to Silicon Valley Comic-Con a few weekends ago, and I was remembering the kind of optimistic speculative fiction that I watched as a kid, especially Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I was thinking about how so much speculative fiction now is dark, or morally ambiguous, or gritty... I sort of think it's the zeitgeist. Technology won't save us, and humans are cruel and horrible. We are globally messing up our planet and the people with the money can't see it and keep their money so they won't see it.
I'm hoping at some point we'll shift back towards optimism, maybe? or realism with a forward-looking slant?
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