I’ve written.
- Fantasy super-short. Not exactly a real sale, story, or venue, but pretty cool for a 15-year-old D&D nerd. Read “Eye-dol Tale, or More Nerd’s Words” and wince.
- SF/Horror Short Story, 3200 words. Completed and started marketing March 2010. I’ve already received two rejections on this work, which is quite heartening. My plan is to market it obsessively until I’ve been rejected by every conceivable venue, then transform it into a brilliant screenplay or graphic novel and laugh maniacally all the way to the piggy bank. Synopsis: A freelance pilot travels across light-years to escape his demons, only to run into an even older one.
I’m writing.
- YA Fantasy Novel. 35,500 words completed, target 75,000. This started as a NaNoWriMo effort in November 2009. I trailed off after the intensity of writing 1,000+ words a day, and started working on it again in June 2010. Synopsis: In the world of Rha, where humans don’t belong, Gam and his two brothers must learn self-reliance when a shadowy enemy abducts their parents. Through conflicts with emperors, fearsome jeweled behemoths, and allies turned traitor, they discover inner strength and magical wonders. But even if they find their parents in this vast, strange world, will their lives ever be the same?
Derek Balsam is a pseudonymous author of fake stories and a hallucinatory reviewer of real music.