The Road to Reality

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Clarion West is having its annual Write-a-Thon fund-raiser. Traditionally (and this is a tradition stretching back an entire year) Eileen Gunn and I have a Smack-Down, our own private two-person forum, in which we talk trash and goad each other on to greater and greater works of literature. Last year, in fact, I tricked Eileen into writing a collaborative story with me by the simple expedient of not telling her we were doing it until it was finished. The story, "Shed That Guilt!" is forthcoming in F&SF.

This year, alas, Eileen was hitch-hiking through the Mountains of the Moon, searching for subterranean Aztec pyramids for the first two weeks of the Write-a-Thon. Or something like that. I'll confess I wasn't paying much attention to her distracted attempts at explanation. ("Gotta run! Being attacked by alligators! ARRRRGH!" and the like.) So, Eileen being the tech-savvy half of the conspiracy, the Smack-Down never got started.

I'm easily bored, though, so I've started a round-robin story with the other 'thonners. You can find it by going to the Clarion West forums, clicking on the Write-a-thon link, and then clicking on Write-a-thon in progress and poking around inside.

According to the Clarion West officials, the story is titled "Trouble," but I personally think it's called "Reality Road."

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