Hogs from Hell

I had hoped to announce that I had completed the story I'm writing and that a story I sent out over a month ago has been accepted. I'm still writing that story and I haven't heard anything from the editor. Nothing much to do about it but pick up my pen and keep writing. That's me in the picture. Yes, it's very cold where I live, all the time. That's why I have to wear a hat and so many robes. And yes, I do write my initial drafts in longhand although I would not call them legible. I have cross-outs and insertions and arrows pointing to whole paragraphs scrawled in the margins. I have tried to compose at the computer, but that empty white screen and blinking cursor bother me, and I find my mind going blank. Typing the manuscript also gives me a first pass at revising.

I am quite excited about the story I'm working on. It's a reworking and expansion of a story the Grimm brothers collected called "The Hand with the Knife." There's not much to the original, only three paragraphs. I've added a few details, extended the plot, and introduced new characters, including a shape-shifting wolf-man. I also invented a new type of beast that I'm calling a helshog (hell's hog). It's a cross between a modern boar and an entelodon, a prehistoric ancestor of the pig. Entelodons are featured in one of the Walking with Beasts episodes. The narrator refers to them as the "Hogs from Hell." I was hoping to write a "short" story, something less than 5K words. However, I've already written over that limit, and I'm nowhere near the end. I need to finish "The Hand with the Knife" so I can move on to some new stories and revise some older ones to send out. Time to put some more coal on the fire and refill that inkwell.