I've been invited into an anthology in my very frequent role as pinch hitter.  When somebody drops out I step in, and usually there is time pressure.  All of this is by way of background.  The real point of these musings is about the importance of having a deep and complex world (or more than one) in your tool box as a writer.

I was despairing of ever coming up with a story in time for the editors, then I was brainstorming with a friend ( I talked about that over on my Facebook page and on Google+), and I had taken out my two universes and was inspecting them while I chatted with her.

The first universe, that holds my two currently in print novels (THE EDGE OF REASON and THE EDGE OF RUIN) is known, not surprisingly, as the Edge universe.  It's a contemporary setting, sort of urban fantasy but with a male protagonist.  That universe gave birth to a short story that I sold to S&SF -- A Token of a Better Age, and another short story in the Dozois/Martin Anthology DOWN THESE STRANGE STREETS entitled No Mystery, No Miracle.

The other universe is my big, sprawling space opera world, known as Imperials.  I need to prepare a proposal and three chapters for the first book in that series, but just haven't had time.  What exists in the Imperials universe is a nearly completed manuscript that isn't near good enough to be published, but where I created the universe, established the rules, the worlds and the players.

The world is as real to me as my Edge universe, or the real world, and I've started mining this universe for short stories.  The first I sold to Thrilling Wonder Stories and it's a story called A Gift Though Small.  I sold the next Tracy Belmanor story to George and Gardner for the SONGS OF LOVE AND DEATH anthology, it's called The Wayfarer's Advice.  And now I'm about to write a story set in this universe for another anthology called Dangerous Women.

Because I have these elaborate worlds created I can shamelessly mine them for little side stories that don't really fit in a one of the novels set in those universes.  I have another Edge story that deals with the final days in Hitler's bunker, and what a Paladin discovers about the Third Reich.  I think having your own, personal world or worlds is really helpful for a science fiction writer.  Mystery writers do the same thing.  Nero Wolfe and Lord Peter are real and inhabit a New York and an England that is all their own.

There is going to be an interesting tap dance that will take place once (fingers crossed) after I sell the Imperials novels.  The story from Song's of Love and Death will need to be incorporated into one of the later novels because it involves a huge plot point for the books.  But that's a problem for another day. Right now I have to start mining for this latest nugget that will hopefully turn out to be a least a garnet if not a diamond.

Bottom line -- my advice is tackle something big.  Give yourself a broad canvas on which to paint.  Give yourself a Second Life that's all your own.  And above all have fun.

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This is what passes for soaring rhetoric from Mitt Romney. 

"I  believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.”

Wow, I'm ready to go out and man the barricades now, aren't you?  What does that even mean?

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