{"id":1045,"date":"2016-12-08T10:13:52","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T15:13:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2016-12-08T10:13:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T15:13:52","slug":"read-a-nice-chunk-of-my-new-novella-where-there-is-nothing-there-is-god-over-on-asimovs-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2016\/12\/read-a-nice-chunk-of-my-new-novella-where-there-is-nothing-there-is-god-over-on-asimovs-com\/","title":{"rendered":"Read a nice chunk of my new novella, “Where There Is Nothing, There Is God,” over on Asimovs.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a tiny excerpt of the big excerpt:<\/p>\n

Chico and the portal guy were waiting for me outside FDA Annex D. Chico was smoking a cigarette. If this was a screenplay, his entire character description would read \u201csinister Mexican.\u201d The portal guy was just standing there, hands in pockets, staring up at the stars and whistling that \u201cYakkety Sax\u201d song from Benny Hill. He abruptly cut off as I climbed out of my car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is your New Guy?\u201d he asked Chico. The portal guy was one of those cheap-blue-oxford-&-khaki-pants cubicle drones, but younger and skinnier than the stock character. He looked pretty damn rumpled\u2014not just \u201cit\u2019s three a.m.\u201d tired, although it was three a.m. It was more the \u201cI\u2019m tired of my whole stupid life\u201d kind of tired. Chico blew twin streams of smoke out his nose, flicking away his cigarette butt without acknowledging the portal guy\u2019s question.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew guy?\u201d I mugged like a vaudevillian, joining them at the glass door, \u201cWhat happened to the old guy?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGal,\u201d the portal guy answered as he waved us in through the glass doors of FDA Annex D. \u201cShe got burned as a witch.\u201d . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you dig actors, gastropubs, meth dealers, heists, Early American Material Culture, academia, mobsters, or Mexican food then this is the novella for\u00a0you!!!<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0Read more: “Where There Is Nothing, There Is God” by David Erik Nelson<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

@SquiDaveo<\/a> !!! pic.twitter.com\/jo7jdUorao<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 David Helder (@dhelder) December 7, 2016<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"This
This started out as index-cards and long-hand on legal pads, which is SOP for me.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For those with a taste for “inside baseball”:\u00a0The original working title of this novella was “Colonial Meth.”<\/em> That is an awful title\u2014but still an improvement over “Time-Portal Crystal Meth Missionaries,”<\/em> which is what I scrawled at the top of the first index card. \u00a0If you squint, you can see that the first legal-pad draft is already titled “Where There is Nothing, There is God”\u2014a title I cribbed from William Butler Yeats<\/a> by way of my old pal Fritz Swanson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure when I started the index cards for this story (these tend to get carried around in my pocket and taped to the\u00a0bathroom mirror for a few months while I mull a story over)\u00a0or the long-hand legal-pad draft, but I’ve got typed draft pages with creation dates as old as November 2013. \u00a0My submissions log indicates I first sent this out in November\u00a02014\u2014so I guess it took a year to write\/revise\u2014and then basically another year-and-a-half to sell (the story was actually accepted in March of 2016), and several more months to revise to everyone’s satisfaction, proof, etc.<\/p>\n

\"The
The full original draft, through its many iterations, stands ~3.25 inches tall. I have no idea why I kept it.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n